Jackass: The Movie (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-By Director, Cinematographer and Johnny Knoxville Audio Commentary-Jackass group commentary Featurette-Making Of Outtakes Additional Footage Music Video-"if you're gonna be dumb", roger alan wade Music Video-"we want fun", andrew w.k. TV Spots-Jackass The Movie Promo Spots Theatrical Trailer Biographies-Cast & Crew Gallery-Photo Gallery-Poster
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	84:59
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (69:28)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jeff Tremaine
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Johnny Knoxville Bam Margera Ryan Dunn Ehren McGhehey Jason Acuna Chris Pontius Dave England Steve-O
Case	?
RPI	$35.95	Music	Slayer The Misfits Public Enemy

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Croatian French Greek Hebrew Italian Portuguese Serbian Slovenian Spanish English Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary English Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    You can't go past Jackass for pure, unadulterated stupidity. I watched this DVD with half a dozen mates on my second viewing and it was a riot. I believe it would have been very interesting to see a crowd react to this film in a cinema environment.

    In comparison with the series, the movie ups the ante in terms of the scale of some stunts and - as you would expect - the budget is considerably higher. As well as more elaborate skits we have an abundance of exotic and varied locations, including Tokyo, London and Mexico. We also get a revolving door of celebrity guests, including Henry Rollins, boxer Butterbean and professional sportsperson Tony Hawk.

    There are some genuinely funny skits this time around - among the most memorable are:

• Rent-A-Car Crash-Up Derby - Johnny Knoxville hires a rental car and - after some major modifications - enters the vehicle in a demolition derby. Knoxville escapes unscathed but the same can't be said for the car, and the proprietors of the rental business are less than impressed.
• Riot Control Test - Knoxville looks very nervous here, on the receiving end of a "less lethal" round of riot control ammunition.
• Ass Kicked By Girl - Ryan Dunn steps into the ring with a female kick boxer for some serious punishment.
• Night Pandas - The cast dress up in Panda outfits and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting Tokyo. It's amazing what the Japanese will put up with!
• Department Store Boxing - Knoxville goes glove-to-glove with American heavyweight Butterbean in a department store foyer, to the shocked expressions of daytime shoppers.
• Off Road Tattoo - Henry Rollins takes the wheel of an off-road military vehicle while Steve-O has a new tattoo drawn in the back seat.
• Golf Course Airhorn - As sportspeople, golfers are renowned for taking themselves much too seriously. What makes this scene so hilarious is the sheer rage on the faces of the golfers when loud air horns are blown as they tee off.

    This film was targeted by one of my local newspapers last week when a man seriously injured himself after imitating one of the skits on this DVD. Bear in mind that this wasn't an impressionable high school kid or a child, it was a supposedly free-thinking adult of 26 years of age. In a society that is showing increasing leanings towards conservative censorship it begs the question - do we vastly underrate the influence this material has on viewers, or are some unfortunate people their own worst enemies?

    As I stated in my previous Jackass review, while I think this is very funny stuff, I doubt it has the longevity to make it anything more than a passing fad.

Video

    This is a pretty disappointing video presentation for what is supposed to be a major feature film. The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image quality varies greatly from scene to scene. A variety of cameras were used in the production, including a pinhole camera hidden in a pair of sunglasses and Digital Betacams were used for the majority of filming. The opening and closing scenes were shot on film for a more professional look, which is very obvious next to the other footage.

    Almost every artefact one could imagine is present here, besides film artefacting. MPEG over-compression is the main culprit. Combined with poor lighting and regular focussing issues, this is quite terrible to view on a large display. We begin with low level noise in some smoke at 1:20 and quickly nose-dive into plenty of regular macro blocking such as on Ryan's upper body at 14:55 and similarly during the film's finale at 83:40. The macro blocking is even more accentuated by objects in motion on the screen, such as in the Roller Disco scene at 41:30. Aliasing also rears its ugly head on more than one occasion (28:25) but is not nearly as annoying as the compression problems. We also have grainy low-light footage here and there to round off the underwhelming video experience. The colour palette is as good as one would expect from a home video camera - adequate without being too bold.

    A small amount of English subtitling is burned into the video stream to aid the viewer when a bad accent is present (35:00), however the selectable English subtitles are fairly accurate, but do omit most of the very frequent profanity. I know a lot of people would consider that a bad thing, but it didn't make a lot of difference in my opinion.

    This disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change placed at 69:28 in a black, silent moment that is totally non-disruptive to the flow of the film.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This is a decent audio experience. The intro and finale stand out as pieces that received extra production attention.

    There are six soundtracks on this disc; English (default), French, Italian and Spanish, all available in Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) and two commentary tracks in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). I listened to the English track and the commentaries in their entirety, and I sampled the other languages when I felt like a laugh - the French dub is particularly hilarious.

    Considering this is comprised entirely of location audio, the dialogue is surprisingly very easy to understand. There were no issues with audio sync in this transfer.

    The soundtrack music is gathered from many legendary punk and metal bands, including Slayer, The Ramones, The Misfits, Black Flag and for a bit of variation, Public Enemy. You couldn't ask for better music to accompany this mayhem.

    The surround activity was concentrated around the big budget introduction and finale, with explosions and debris flying around the room. This utilised quite a bit of panning across the rears and from front to rear - I actually ducked at one point as this was so effective. During the rest of the film there are some intermittent uses of the surround channels, such as when a golf cart flies overhead at 12:55, and the use of fireworks at 20:00. Occasionally I felt some music spilling slightly to the rears, but it was generally confined to the front soundstage, along with the dialogue.

    The LFE channel kicked in to add some nice bottom end to the soundtrack music, and particularly added to the rumbling explosions at 2:45 and 83:00.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Back up the truck, we've got the mother lode! Seriously though, this probably explains why so much compression was required on the feature. Six soundtracks and this package of bonus material is quite a bit to fit on one disc. All video extras contain the same subtitle options as the feature and are 16x9 enhanced unless noted otherwise.

Menu

Audio Commentary - Johnny Knoxville (Actor), Dimitry Elyashkevich (Director of Photography/ Producer), Jeff Tremaine (Director/ Producer).

    Johnny talks about the lengths he has to go to so as not to be recognised. We also get some amusing production anecdotes but there are many long pauses - some are so long that I forgot the commentary track was on. Available with English, French, Spanish and Italian subtitles.

Cast Audio Commentary - Ehren McGhehey, Jason 'Wee Man' Acuna, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius, Dave England and Ryan Dunn.

    This commentary is also dominated by long pauses and in-jokes between the cast members that the average viewer would have no idea about. They also make a lot of comments and jokes about what is on screen, but don't offer any real insights into the making of the film or how the Jackass concept came about. For the most part this is a boring, uninformative commentary.

MTV's Making Of Jackass The Movie (24:35)

Outtakes (7:07)

Additional Footage (27:45)

Music Videos

Promo Spots (4:58)

Theatrical Trailer (1:03)

Cast and Crew Biographies (24)

Photo and Poster Galleries

• English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio.

    Region 1 misses out on:

• Spanish, French, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
• Many, many subtitle options.

    It appears Region 4 has been given a heavily compressed video transfer to allow for the additional language options. Many Region 1 reviews suggest that there are no compression issues with their transfer - though I cannot confirm this absolutely. If you plan on viewing this disc on a large display and aren't concerned with alternative languages I'd suggest the Region 1 for purchase.

    The video quality is marred by consistent compression artefacts.

    Of the many audio options, the English track is a decent surround effort.

    There are a lot of extras related to the film, some of them good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall