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Are you havin' a laugh?

Jackass rocket stunt
  • Posted at 12:23pm
  • 28 March 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

I'm not sure if this is a confession or a boast, but I have never watched Jackass, MTV's extreme stunt show, and I've avoided both of its feature-length spin-offs, including jackass number two.

I don't believe that this is a dereliction of my film critic's duties as I know it's not aimed at me. As far as I understand it, Johnny Knoxville and his cohorts throw themselves off things and attach other things to parts of their body, in a kind of ever-spiralling game of dare.

"Gross" is the name of the game in an age when comedy aimed at a young demographic is increasingly characterised by pushing the envelope of bad taste. One critic asked: "How far and how low will these guys go?" To which the answer is: to levels that I couldn't even describe on a website read by all members of the family.

But this is not a trend confined to the cult slipstream. Gross-out movies have been mainstream since as far back as National Lampoon’s Animal House in 1978, which, as a teenager, I enthusiastically bought into. That said, its frat-house antics would hardly be considered extreme today.

The Farrelly brothers raised the bar with a string of comedies including There's Something about Mary, which features what we will decorously refer to as Cameron Diaz's "hair gel moment".

One mustn't be too prudish, though. Monty Python went for the gross-out laugh often enough, and the finest silent comedy is based in slapstick.

But Jackass is still a far cry from classic comedies like What’s Up, Doc? and Blazing Saddles (both showing on Tuesday 1 April on TCM as part of Fool's Gold night). Mind you, what's everybody's favourite scene in the latter? I'll give you a clue: it's no Gone with the Wind.

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