Ten years is a long time to know somebody. In real life, I've only known one friend for the same amount of time as I've known Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Dave England, Steve-O, Danger Ehren, Preston Lacey, Ryan Dunn, Phil and April Margera, and Wee Man. To me that counts as a substantial relationship.
When the closing credits rolled it was like being crushed in the middle of a great big group hug from a small army of sweatier, older, hairier brothers. Meanwhile, Spike Jonze revelled in the art of total destruction; blowing up just about everything he could get his little mitts on for the humble purpose of capturing a tortured expression in high definition 3D.
How could you not love this.
Of course they have their disparagers.
"Did they need to make another movie?"
Did Scorsese?
I'll tell you why you should fork out to see this. Three dimensions justifies the second sequel. Super slow-motion replays in hi-def with dildo explosions; fecal matter splatter; bits of... things. Jackass 3D is pushing the artistic boundaries of the medium.
 |
| "The Invisible Suit" |
3D cinema isn't the future. 3D cinema is now. But they can't tell you it's now because then you won't think that it's current because current is getting what's coming earlier than it should come, which is now.
By the time everybody has a 3D television they'll start bringing out hologramovisions at five grand a pop. Everybody'll rush out and buy them, then six months later they'll become cheaper to make way for the hologramovisionogulator which will be the same thing but with a slightly shinier ogulator... And so on.
We are living in the future. So when is now? Why, it's yesterday, because yesterday is boring history.
Blu-ray? £20 for Die Hard? Really?
Anyway.
Back in the olden days when kings lived in cold stone castles and people ate hog roasts all of the time and not just on fireworks night, there were such men whose vocation was in the art of Jestery. The jester was the fool- the clown- whose slapstick would amuse the dignified crowd.
These men from Dickhouse Productions are the jesters of our day. Comedy hasn't changed, but it has had to become a bit more imaginative.
Duck Hunt:
A giant inflatable thing sits on the edge of a lake. A man dressed as a duck lies on the end of it. Two men jump from a crane onto the other end of the inflatable: duck man flies into the air. Two boats full of men fire paintball guns at the flailing duck, who is airborne for the best part of four painful seconds before crashing into the water in a cloud of feathers.
Laughter.
Ram Jam:
Two men dressed as members of a marching band, complete with tuba and trumpet, decide to find out whether music can tame wild beasts. Reveal: an angry RAM. Tuba player enters the pen, instantly invigorating the animal's imperative to destroy. He gets through little but one note on his instrument before being battered to the floor. He is battered again. He cannot get up. Meanwhile, trumpet player's jeans are stuck on pole. He cannot come to the tuba musician's aide. Pain.
I enjoy Frasier. I laugh out loud to Woody Allen. Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci are the gay dads I never had. Still, can one not watch You've Been Framed religiously every saturday night? Can one not watch one grown man throw a glass of water in another's face, followed by a boxing glove, all in slow motion, to the Rocky theme tune?
If one can't do that then one is sad at the snobbery of other ones.
Jackass was nothing but pure fun. It was a group of friends making each other laugh, filming it, then hoping it would make others laugh. Not everybody liked it- not everybody has the same sense of humour- but certainly enough people laughed to justify it being on television. Three Series. Three movies. Knoxville was a movie star for a few years.
The reason we loved them so much is because these guys were guys like you and me. Regular Joes with unusually large balls.
Immature?
You could have spent the last decade sitting in a South Kensington champagne bar exchanging witticisms about the way Martin Amis's latest post-pubescent loser wants to touch a "boob", but I doubt that you almost fell off of your fucking chair laughing about it.
Getting all blurry eyed in the end credits- thanks partly to the tear-rendering friendship song performed by the cast- I took the time to reflect on the last ten years of my own life.
You know what? I haven't grown up at all. But neither have my oldest friends. So it doesn't matter one bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment