Jackass Number 2

Director: Jeff Tremaine

Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius

By now we all know the script. A group of ‘grown’ men find increasingly insane, grotesque, or downright ludicrous stunts to pull off – or not, as the case often is – whilst we watch, apprehensively biting on one fist and compulsively slapping a thigh with the other. Led by the ever-charismatic Johnny Knoxville, the Jackass boys had already perfected the formula on MTV before their big screen debut in 2003. They now return, fuelled by a bigger budget and a creativity that knows no bounds when it comes to mixing self-harm with hilarity, to serve up another volley of rambunctious cinematic fun.

This time around we have the fart-mask and a man strapped to a fireman’s hose. We have bum-branding. We have an attempt to recreate Evil Knevil’s rocket launch over the Grand Canyon…In a wheelchair. We even have a snake teased into attack by a man’s member dressed-up as a mouse. And just to remind us that they know this is cinema and not TV, we have two bookends to the mayhem; it all begins with a bull run that mimics the pyrotechnics of the first film’s trolley run, and then ends with a wonderfully unexpected homage to 1930’s Busby Berkeley musicals.

But what really makes Jackass Number Two so watchable is not the ever-crazier stunts Knoxville and Co. are willing to attempt. Rather it’s the banter that accompanies these gonzo-style movies; banter that reminds us just how much fun the Jackass lads have doing them. In the end it is this that gives the film a strange kind of charm, and makes us desperate for more of the same. The boys, it seems, are very definitely back.

Jonathon Cooper