DVD: How Jackass Raised the Gross-Out Comedy Bar

One of the interesting ideas in the original graphic novel Watchmen is the notion that in a world where meta-humans actually existed, superhero comics would become obsolete. After all, why read about the fictional adventures of Superman or The Flash when Dr. Manhattan is in the newspaper every day? I thought about that while watching the Farrelly Brothers' lackadaisical new comedy Hall Pass -- one scene (involving a sneeze and an explosive bowel movement) was clearly meant to shock and amuse us, but the audience seemed unmoved. And it occurred to me that any fictional gross-out is destined to pale next to the real stuff you can see in Jackass 3 (out this week in a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack from Paramount Home Entertainment).

In the same way that Pink Flamingos opened the door for scatological humor in American movies -- not that any screen comics took themselves to the personal limit that Divine did in that subversive John Waters classic -- the Jackass shenanigans up the ante on gross-out humor. Then they double down. Then they pee on the table.

When the Farrelly Brothers made Cameron Diaz's hair stick straight up thanks to Ben Stiller's spunk in There's Something About Mary in 1998, they brought jizz jokes out of discussions of the president's personal life and onto the big screen. It was a shocking, hilarious, galvanizing moment, one that represented a cultural shift. (Just like the farting cowboys of Blazing Saddles.)

But then Jackass came on the air in 2000. The TV show featured people stuck in overturned porta-potties and suffering severe blows to the genitals, but the transition to the movies (and a more forgiving R-rating) let these guys go wild -- when one of them drank actual horse semen in Jackass Number Two (2006), it was clear we were never, ever going to see Cameron Diaz do that in a movie.

Jackass 3 sees Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn, Bam Margera, Wee Man, Preston Lacey, and the whole crew up to their usual hi-jinks, mixing genius and stupidity and laughter and pain and delight and horror in a way that only they can. I was the tiniest bit disappointed that they didn't exploit 3-D in a way that major studios wouldn't -- there should have been full-frame genitals popping out of movie screens from coast to coast -- but since the DVD avoids the new digital DVD format in favor of old-school blue-red, it's a moot point.

The generation that grew up on Jackass will no doubt come up with something more outrageous and unthinkable in the future -- that's how art works, after all -- but Hollywood comedy, no matter how "daring," will probably never reach the level that this hilarious Theater of Pain managed to achieve over the last decade.