Jackass 3D

Try as they might, the Jackass gang can't quite snatch the year's ultimate 3D gross-out from the pricking jaws of Pirahna 3-D, which had audiences heaving and ho-ho-hoing in the aisles with its ridiculously icky regurgitated, underwater, gnawed-on-penis-in-your-face shot. Honestly, though, that was a shocker, shrinkage-inducing and awfully unforgettable (and vice versa). The cunning stuntwork of this motley band of jackanapes who, lest we forget, still count American auteur Spike Jonze among their number, is marginally less shocking this time out, even when we're presented with scenes so bile-risible that the cameraman pukes on his own camera. Such is the case with ever-fearless Steve-O, who explosively regurgitates a mouthful of Preston Lacy's precious bodily fluids: Stomach contents and an outflow of redolent porta-potty effluvium rule the day, while testicles and taboos are smashed flat with equal abandon. Jackass is 10 years old this year but thankfully evinces no more maturity than when it first premiered on MTV, intro'd and bookended by the now vaguely melancholy strains of D. Boon, Mike Watt, and George Hurley's Minutemen. And, really, who wants to see Wee-Man and Bam discuss the Romantics over a single malt scotch? Three or five or 10 single malts, sure, but one? I think not. In between Johnny Knoxville getting rammed senseless by a buffalo and tooth extraction via Lamborghini (an inspired bit, in theory), there are moments of comic brilliance that, cleverly, don't make you want to hurl. The best – and weirdest – of these is a Dada-esque barroom knuckle-duster involving Jason "Wee-Man" Acuña in an all-little-person, old-school pub brawl, which is a seriously high-flown piece of low-brow entertainment that would leave both Guy Debord and Salvador Dalí weeping tears of merriment over the sheer surreality of it all. (Unsurprisingly, it's also vastly more entertaining than the Chevy Chase/Carrie Fisher tag-team film Under the Rainbow.) Jackass continues to rock on like your older brother's batshit crazy best friend with the creepy gleam in his hooded eyes, only now you can pull up YouTube and see that sort of thing 24/7, should you feel the uncontrollable urge. It's been a decade and perhaps I'm somewhat jaded, but cattle prods, whiffle balls, and the efficacies of flesh-on-flesh super gluing are less terrifying, frankly, than the idea of these incorrigible hooligans ever straightening up and flying right – onward and upward, gonads at the ready.