Before you come at me with a cattle prod, let me assure you that the top three films are almost in a virtual tie for first place. Almost. I’m placing “Jackass Number Two” at number three because it lacked the shocking escalation of the first movie. Rarely has a film exceeded my expectations as thoroughly as “Jackass: The Movie,” whereas its follow-up is, in terms of scale and stomach-turning genius, more of the riotous same.
This is, however, the only official, non-narrative “Jackass” installment that introduces a bit of character development. Who knew that Bam, the collective’s brattiest member (particularly in light of his unapologetic and unremitting torture of his parents), had an incapacitating fear of snakes? Once his buddies catch wind of this phobia, they exploit it in classic, several-miles-over-the-top Jackass fashion by surreptitiously dumping him in a pit full of slithering, hissing serpents. And Bam only elates his co-stars more by crying.
I’d say this would be the closest a Jackass stunt has ever come to outright cruelty, but a) it’s Bam, and b) the long-con bit in which McGhehey poses as a terrorist to spook a cab driver only to have the tables ruthlessly turned on him (the driver is Broken Lizard’s Jay Chandrasekhar) is downright evil. When McGhehey realizes his fake beard was made out of shaved pubic hair, we just assume he did something at some juncture in his life to deserve this.
(I will say that, of the “.5” releases that are essentially feature-length collections of cut scenes, “Jackass 2.5” is the best of the bunch.)
