The Movie
We live in uptight times, so do I really need to explain the allure of two grown men in their underwear (and bear hats) playing tether ball with a loaded beehive? The flesh-and-blood cartoon characters of Jackass 3 manage to take bull horns, dog bites, scorpion stings and every imaginable sort of impact in stride. With no fear, a big smile and a high threshold for pain, Johnny Knoxville and his try-anything posse routinely risk pain, humiliation and lost lunches in pursuit of entertainment, and a peculiar brand of glory.
Proffered here in R-rated theatrical and unrated versions, Jackass 3 will surely contain something to offend everyone. I won't spoil any of the surprises, but a bit with a model train set was right on the edge of what I could stomach, and I lost count of how many times I exclaimed "Holy crap!" at the TV.
The format here should be familiar to anyone who watched the first two movies, or the show, a combination of quick hidden-camera pranks like "The Rocky" and some more elaborate stunt setups or concepts like "Super Mighty Glue" explored to the fullest. A few harmless sight gags are thrown in as well. Some of it looks a little staged, but much simply cannot be faked. The proceedings are extra-funny when the participants start to panic right before the action, since they have done it all and walked away... or so we think before seeing Jackass 3.
Geoff Morrison's review of Jackass 3, meanwhile, is guaranteed not to leave teeth marks in your butt.
The Picture
Shot on a variety of video cameras, including a crotch-mounted model, Jackass 3 offers a generally sharp 16:9 HD image. The flaws include some video noise in low-light scenes or out-of-focus backgrounds, sometimes significant; some moiré on a fence; and the contrast might go a little screwy in a shot, or blacks might become a little mushy. But there are many outdoor scenes and the individual blades of grass for example really tend to pop.
This Blu-ray is strictly 2D, despite the movie being shot and released theatrically in 3D. Heck, MTV VIPs Beavis and Butt-Head even introduce it and remind us to put on our 3D glasses. An anaglyph 3D DVD is included in the package however, but it pales in the Blu-ray 3D world.
The Sound
Much of the movie was shot quick-and-dirty, documentary style, with the lightweight video cameras, and yet great post-production effort was made to make this a "movie" mix, not limited to live audio, no matter how real the events may be. For the "High Five," the giant mechanical hand seems to swing around behind us, and there are frequent crash-landings in the rears as well. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel soundfield comes alive with 50,000 Africanized bees, a gauntlet of active tasers, and a working toy helicopter tied to... well, just see it.
In the stylized portions of the movie, action is captured in slow motion with added sound effects, the animated logo whooshes over us, and even the Beavis and Butt-Head intro offers some discrete action. Music is typically mixed across the entire soundstage. There's a nice bass thump for the paint bomb inside a porta-potty, and the trebles are airy as a flying penis shatters a glass of milk. And here I thought I was done writing about flying penises for the year.
The Extras
After watching "The Making of Jackass 3D" (29 minutes), we might think that the perpetrators/victims of these shenanigans were actually normal dudes, if we didn't know better. There are also eleven deleted scenes totaling 16 minutes, and 28 minutes of outtakes. Hard to imagine that there were "bloopers" here, when a guy getting hit in the nuts and falling over makes it to the final edit, but this section also features some raw, extended takes. All of these are in HD.
Disc Two is hybrid DVD containing a Digital Copy for either iTunes or Windows Media in addition to the aforementioned theatrical version in anaglyph 3D. Four pairs of cardboard glasses with red/green lenses are provided.
Final Thoughts
No matter how cool they may seem, I could not hang with these guys, for constant fear of what torture might be lurking around the corner. We shouldn't laugh at this bad behavior, but we do, loudly, and this Blu-ray package generously, enjoyably collects a fresh new crop of train-wreck comedy.
Product Details
Where to Buy:
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Movie | |
| Extras |
