"...A warm treat for the copropheliac in us all..." - Bryce Krispie, The Tassie Times

When the first scenes of Jackass started, I was overly disappointed. Not because I was essentially watching a 100 minute long home movie in a cinema made for films - but that I'd actually bought tickets for Maid In Manhatten and walked into the wrong cinema.
Oh well, make do with my own stupidity I guess. That's what everybody else does.

I tell a lie (and attempt a joke) in the above paragraph. I was actually quite impressed with the opening scene of Jackass. Don't read this if you plan on seeing it, but anyway, the movie starts like this:
The Jackass boys are all in a huge shopping trolley, hurtling down a steep San Fransisco hill, the cape-wearing midget at the helm, the fat dude acting as ballast. This sight is slowed down, filmed on 16mm at a high frame rate, and played to a classical piece of operatic chanting, creating an image stunning in both its cinematography and sheer peculiarness. As they make their decent faster and more frantic - BOOM! A cannon goes off to the vehicle's left, shooting dirt and rocks into the craft. BOOM! Another blast, forcing it's contents violently onto the awaiting group, assaulting them this time on the opposite side. Team members fall off as the explosives take their destructive toll.

Nice, good humored people, and most likely very funny. At least funny to look at.

It truely was poetic in it's fluid communion of cinema and violence.
Suddenly and hilariously, the hill comes to a conclusion in the form of a gutter, comically catapulting the occupants of the shopping trolley into a street stall, it's hilarity accentuated by some impressive foley work.
"Wow", I thought to myself as the screen faded to black.
"This might actually be better than the TV show."
But then, the 'real' movie started...

Unlike the abysmall awkwardness of Ali G's film adaptation, or the dodginess of The Inspector Gadget movie, 'Jackass' avoids making a shitty transition to film by simply not doing it - that is, by making no transition at all. That's right, it's the same old shit you'd see on TV; except it's longer, no swear word/nudity/rude finger censoring, and the image is wider. Oh, and they go to Japan.

This guy is also pretty cool.

But still, they could've at least tried to have some sort of narrative thread, some underlying premise that connected all the segments. Shit, they weren't even shown in cronological order. There was a prime opportunity for an entertaining B-plot about the fat guy in sumo gear chasing around the little guy in sumo gear, but sadly this golden opportunity for pants-shitting comedy was discarded after one brief yet hilarious scene.

One thing they did get right though was saving the best 'till last. I was thinking for a climax maybe there'd be a death, a maiming, maybe even someone doing a really, really big poop - but what they had instead was nearly 800X better: RIP TAYLOR!!!
I know it's bit of a cheat, but when your movie's going nowhere and you need to finish it up, you can't go past Rip Taylor. Ah, to be bathed in the gingerly strewn about confetti from that man's hat, that would be bliss my brothers.

Even though in all technicalities it was an abomination of a film, it was still pretty funny, what with all their whacky exploits and stuff. Funny enough they may be to jump into a ceiling fan or shit their pants, you can't really say the performers bring much to the table in actual talent. Not much more talent than your average jailhouse rape victim anyway.
I think it says a fair bit about you as a performer if your entire

A strong candidate for the coolest thing ever.

career rests on literally almost killing yourself for an audience response. Well, killing yourself or being fat. Or really short.

Violence, midgets, fat people and Rip Taylor aside though, the rest of the shit was, well, shit. No seriously, like actual turds and stuff.
Like anyone who's ever farted before, or thrown horse crap at their friend, I'm aware that, most times, bodily waste is funny. Sure, it's pretty good, but it's not always funny. Vomiting on sushi isn't funny. Eating a yellow snocone isn't funny (until you get kicked in the nuts). Pooing your pants isn't funny, and hasn't been since about half way through grade 3. Well at least I think so, cause when I shat my pants in grade 4 neither I, nor anyone else on the bus thought it anywhere near good comedic practise.

But at the end of the day, you just can't deny the appeal Jackass has across the board of movie goers. As predicted, the annoying, aloud-reading 15 year old kids behind me were thrilled and inspired by the like-minded deadshits humiliating themselves on screen, and couldn't wait to recreate the facile exploits of a bunch of similarly untalented turds at home or the local Hungry Jacks carpark. The staunch critic of modern cinema, on the otherhand, can take delight in what they see before them during Jackass: No, not the depressing thought that Jackass earns millions at the international box office yet the faded covers of the Three Colors Trilogy gathers dust at the shelves of Video Ezy, or that randomly selected vignettes of idiots being idiots would attract such a huge and voracious audience; but rather, that the idiots are (or at least seem to be) assaulting themselves with great amounts of pain and physical humiliation. Like my dentist used to say, it's hard to hate someone after you, or someone else has kicked the shit out of them. So yes, Jackass is good in that it shows us how we can all come together, forget our differences, and watch a bunch of spastics hurt themselves in a variety of deadly and stupid stunts.