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At one point in Jackass 3-D, beloved dare­devil Steve-O pauses in the mid­dle of intro­duc­ing a seg­ment to rhetor­i­cally ask the audi­ence “Why must I be Steve-O?” It’s a ques­tion we’d all like to know the answer to.  This third film in the series doesn’t get us any closer to that elu­sive answer but it gives the audi­ence plenty to mar­vel at while they pon­der that ques­tion with the film’s cast of love­able self-flagellating dare­dev­ils.  There’s also tons of ridicu­lous stunts, hair-raising phys­i­cal injuries, male nudity, pro­fan­ity, bod­ily flu­ids and, of course, poo.  Mountains of poo.

If you’ve ever seen the Jackass t.v. series or either of its past cin­e­matic incar­na­tions, you know the drill: a rag-tag group of cheer­ful head-cases — the most promi­nent being Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera and the afore­men­tioned Steve-O — indulge in a series of gonzo stunts and prac­ti­cal jokes designed to make view­ers laugh, squirm or do both at once.  Significant high­lights on this go-round include Knoxville get­ting charged by a buf­falo, some blood­cur­dling skin-on-skin antics with super-adhesive glue, Steve-O doing a bungee-jump in an excrement/urine-filled port-a-potty and the dreaded “poo-cano.”

As the title indi­cates, this install­ment of the series is notable for its endear­ingly crass use of cur­rent three-dimensional film tech­nol­ogy.  Truth be told, only about half of Jackass 3-D really uses the poten­tial of 3-D in an inter­est­ing way and the only time it is truly essen­tial to the film’s effec­tive­ness is dur­ing the open­ing and clos­ing sequences, both of which are care­fully staged in a stu­dio envi­ron­ment to exploit every goof­ball 3-D gim­mick imag­in­able.  That said, it’s nice to see a mod­ern 3-D epic be upfront about its shame­less gim­mickry — and those open­ing and clos­ing scenes are worth the price of the added 3-D cost alone.

As for the film itself, it’s not quite up to the phantasmagorical-grossout stan­dard of the first two films.  For instance, there are some recy­cled bits (a giant springloaded hand that attacks the gang when walk­ing into a room repeats a past gag involv­ing a springloaded box­ing glove, a scene where a “gorilla” attacks Bam’s par­ents is a revi­sion of a prior gag that involved the mom find­ing an alli­ga­tor in her home).

That said, there a few sequences that rank with the best and most sur­pris­ing com­edy moments of this year, like Johnny Knoxville danc­ing and lip-synching to “You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd” before get­ting buffalo-rushed and a bar-fight scene involv­ing Wee Man that goes to sur­re­al­is­ti­cally hilar­i­ous extremes before a stunned group of onlook­ers.  The lat­ter bit also shows off the odd­ball whimsy inher­ent to the Jackass con­cept, a key ele­ment of these films that often gets over­looked by its crit­ics.  Beneath the blood­shed and bod­ily flu­ids, these are just the boys from next door hav­ing goof­ball fun and occa­sion­ally get­ting quite cre­ative with it.

However, the most impor­tant thing about Jackass 3-D is the audi­ence expe­ri­ence. Like its pre­de­ces­sors, this is a film designed to be seen with a packed audi­ence because the tension-and-release aspect is best expe­ri­enced in such a set­ting.  Director/ringleader Jeff Tremaine keeps the gags flow­ing at a fast clip and knows how to tease out the punch­line of a slap­stick setup for max­i­mum effect.  The end result is as exhil­a­rat­ing as a good roller­coaster ride and it works over the audi­ence with ruth­less efficiency.

Thus, Jackass 3-D gets a qual­i­fied rec­om­men­da­tion: if you enjoy this curi­ous sort of enter­tain­ment and can see it in a the­ater with a good crowd (or gather a decent-sized appre­cia­tive group of view­ers when it hits video) then it is worth your time for the vis­ceral punch of the expe­ri­ence alone.  If only Hollywood’s scripted come­dies could come across with the sort of swinging-at-the-fences impact that this film occa­sion­ally musters up…