It is pretty hard to review a movie like Jackass because it is one of those things where either you think grown men doing disastrous stunts and all manner of filthy and depraved things is funny or you don’t. If you don’t then this review is simple and stops here. Avoid this movie at all cost. This third installment is by far the grossest and most over the top of the series and if you don’t like what has come before you aren’t going to like this one. This is, of course, great news for people who do like it as this is by far the grossest and most hilarious of the series and there are very few boring stunts.

If any one out there is unaware of what Jackass is, it is the third film in a continuation of an MTV stunt show where in Johnny Knoxville and his cadre of stunt men including Ryan Dunn, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy, Wee Man, Dave England, Ehren McGhehey, and assortment of celebrity helpers who do a variety of stunts ranging from rigging contraptions to try to jump things, contraptions to trick each other into pain, setting up Rube Goldberg style devices to hurt each other, usually involving the balls, pulling pranks on each other and the public at large and eating or drinking disgusting things like sweat, pee or poop. Highbrow entertainment this is not but it is at turns amazing, hilarious and cringe worthy.

The thing that makes Jackass work isn’t just that you are seeing these guys do gross things or get owned during stunts such that you aren’t sure how they can still walk or feel anything below the neck, but it is the set up, the anticipation and the aftermath. All of these stages work together to make each stunt hilarious. It would be one thing if it was just the stunts themselves because a lot of those are genuinely cool to watch from a car wreck standpoint, but given that the group comes off as a bunch of goofy dudes who are having fun with each other it really helps to draw you in to their antics. They have a really good sense of timing as well as they know just how long to draw the anticipation out to generate a lot of tension from the audience. We know it is going to be bad but we don’t know just how bad.

The use of slow motion and HD cameras really helps sell the stunts as well. They will sometimes slow down the moments leading up to the stunt to maximize the anticipation or they will just show it at full speed and the do an instant replay in slow motion. With the HD, the slow motion takes on much more teeth gritting as you see every nuance of a hit, or if it is something involving poop, vomit or pee you get the separation of particles that really drives home exactly what you are seeing and somehow manages to make it that much more disgusting. So, for instance, the Poocano, which is basically a volcano of poop (I will leave exactly what this is and how it happens for you to discover), is really gross when shown full speed but when they slow it down? I have probably seen grosser things in my life (and a few of them are things that happen later in the movie) but the Poocano definitely ranks. I am not going to say I almost threw up or anything but this was one of several moments when I could feel something brewing.

This time out they threw in 3D which was better than I thought it would be. It helped with feeling like you were part of the antics as you often felt like you were standing there with them, but I am not sure a flying dildo coming right at my head was worth a $12.75 ticket price. The film would have worked fine without it and it doesn’t really add enough to justify the increased ticket price.

I think my favorite moments in the movie are not the ones with the stunts and the gross outs but rather the pranks. There are some real gems here and I wish there were more. Bad Grandpa is awesome and one in which Preston Lacy asks a man on the street to hold his dog for a minute is gold. The best, however, is one I don’t want to describe but almost had me running out of air. It involves Wee Man on a date in a bar and it is wonderful. I really wish there had been more of this and a little less of Steve-o drinking gross things but oh well.

Conclusion [8.5 out of 10]

Jackass 3D is very, very funny if you are into this sort of thing. I would like not to be into this sort of thing but given I have loved all of the Jackass movies I very much am. You aren’t going to leave the theater a better person or be enlightened in some way but you sure as hell will be entertained. I wish it would have been in 2D and cost less but oh well. It was still worth seeing in the theater for the audience reaction alone.