At a time when the rancid products of our mass media are worse than ever, it seems like the release of “Jackass 2” would offer an easy occasion for a stern browbeating about the dumbing-down of American culture. But no; not even close. There is a point at which moral seriousness congeals into humorlessness. Wilde said it best when he wrote of Dickens, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing”. With exhilarating vulgarity, Johnny Knoxville and his cast of crazies tests the mineral content of the hearts of high-minded moviegoers within the first minute of the film. Those who fail the test will miss what is by far one of the year’s funniest movies. Though not quite as fresh and original as the first installment, the sequel’s gross-out gags are almost as side-splitting and inventive as the original. The final prank, which operates on multiple levels of clever skullduggery, plays off of the idea of terrorist airplane bombers, and in its twisted way seems like one of the sanest, healthiest bits of humor to come along in post-9/11 America.
The glowingly infectious humor of the “Jackass” films doesn’t spring from fecal obsessions or skater stunts or other mindless “I dare you” fandangos, but instead something purer and more respectable (if not entirely unrelated to those things): the sheer fun of friends clowning around with each other. What comes through is the bond the guys share, a bond familiar to anyone who has been a part of a gang of mischievous boys. The obvious comparison is to frat-house hazing, but really it’s more of a piece with goofing around on a school playground or sitting around suffering after-school boredom in some suburban teenage wasteland. The stunts, amazing as some of them are, are often unexciting, but the more involved pranks, such as Knoxville’s punching letter or the electrified stool on which Wee Man is made to sit, are low-fi gags that rely on careful observations of human behavior to work. The film affirms human sociability, however filthy it may be. If nothing else, the fun is genuine; “fun” in movies is usually a market-group driven disaster of corporate calculation. Here is a film alive and crackling with laughter, pulsing with camaraderie and trust as much as it stinks of piss and puke. The damning comment on our culture is not that a film like this exists, but that the sight of a bunch of friends making each other laugh is so unusual it almost feels revolutionary. |
