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Self-inflicted trauma - what utter bliss

By Nathan Lee
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Jan 12, 2007, Page 17

Film Notes: Jackass Number Two Directed by: Jeff Tremaine Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy, Ryan Dunn, Ehren McGhehey and others Running time: 92 minutes. Taiwan release: Today

When the supermasochist Bob Flanagan nailed his penis to a piece of wood in front of a live audience, it was called performance art. When Chris Pontius sheathes his penis in a cotton puppet, dangles it in front of a live snake, and then braces himself for the fangs while his buddies double over in glee, it's known as Jackass.

Puppet Show is the opening bit in Jackass Number Two, the second feature-length collection of stunts, pranks and self-inflicted trauma from Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of skate-punk yahoos. Much of what follows is too obscene to be described here; suffice to say that disreputable things are done with the ejaculate of a horse. It is also too exhilarating to spoil. Debased, infantile and reckless in the extreme, this compendium of body bravado and malfunction makes for some of the most fearless, liberated and cathartic comedy in modern movies.

You may prefer a Buster Keaton gag to the spectacle of a man leaping from a trampoline into a ceiling fan, but you can't argue with its purity of expression. At the root of the Jackass project is an impulse to deny the superego and approach the universe, with all its hard edges and shark-infested waters, as an enormous, undifferentiated playpen. That, and the impulse to watch a 180kg woman belly-flop on top of a midget. The Surrealists would have loved these guys, and relished the film's signature image: the application of a leech to the surface of an eyeball.

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