Jackass: Number Two lives up to everything we would expect after the first time and a successful TV show. The sequel is bigger and certainly pushes the limits of what we might consider good taste, but its all for a laugh, so, in the end, it works.

Like the original film, Number Two is book ended by some scripted sequences: a running of the bulls and a musical number with plenty of bodily injury thrown in for good measure. Between those we are treated to some of the most cringe inducing stunts even printed on celluloid. So many of the bits hit that it becomes almost impossible to hear the dialog spoken before and after jokes because the theater is uproariously applauding or laughing too loud. Not that this is a bad thing.

Truth be told, Number Two, much like the first time, is best seen with a large group of friends in a packed theater. Half of the experience is the atmosphere created by hundreds of jackass fans all sharing sympathy pains or laughing hysterically at the jokes. Even the dreaded “Junior High Explosion” that seems to ruin the movie-going experience week after week is kept in check (partly because of the film’s R-rating and because being noisy is part of the game).

Johnny Knoxville and the guys have upped the ante on themselves with the second installment in the series with some very creative pranks and some harking back to the old school roots of the series. Standouts include the Terrorist Cab Ride near the end of the film where one of the crew is dressed up to look Middle Eastern and asks to go to the airport spouting anti-American propaganda. Little does he know that the cabbie is, in fact, director Jay Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar stops the cab in a parking lot and pulls a gun causing laughter abounds from those in on the joke and chilling fear from those not.

Old school send-ups include fun with shopping carts, mini-bikes, and various other objects attached to what appear to be oxygen tanks and let loose off of a ramp into a lake. Every skit in the film seems to click even the most disgusting ones like director/producer Spike Jonze walking around in make up pretending to be an elderly woman whose robe keeps on opening up.

Jackass: Number Two successfully continues the long-concluded MTV franchise on the big screen. The film represents some of the grossest moments you’ll ever see in a film, but it also provides some of the biggest laughs of the year. It certainly won’t win any awards, but its definitely a film to see, providing you liked the series and can stand to see grown men vomiting uncontrollably.

I don’t think I have ever had to write a harder review, and it isn’t because I saw a movie I knew was going to be great and it wasn’t, or because I saw a movie made by a good friend and didn’t want to give my honest opinion, it was because I saw a movie so out of the mold of movies that I don’t know where to begin as far as a review, or scoring the damn thing.

Jackass is just that kind of movie, where to begin? If you are going to this movie looking for plot, suspense, action, drama, or comedy, you aren’t going to get all of that. The comedy is there depending on your area of low brow humor and fun and some suspense is there waiting to see who is going to get reamed next and by what, but this isn’t your traditional movie, it is something better.

Jackass started as a two season series at MTV where it was versed to criticism and outcry from parents who made the TV their child’s babysitter and then got their panties in a bunch when it did something they didn’t like. Even after several children (obviously the dumb ones with negligent parents) tried to recreate some of the stunts on the show, the warnings went in place and Johnny Knoxville and company kept on entertaining America.

So the movie is basically an episode of the show times three in the length department and times 10 in the gross, weird, and fun actions they perform. Stunts range from the hilarious like Rent-A-Car Derby and Air Horn Golf  where in the latter the gang hides on a golf course in camouflage gear and blows air horns when prissy country-club folks are about to take a swing. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

You also get into the gross where one cast member messes himself in his pants in preparation of going into a hardware store and using one of the display toilets, for real, which also proves to be one of the grossest things you have ever seen on the big screen. Nothing has to be grosser, and more vomit inducing, then the “pee-snow-cone” in which a cast member proceeds to eat the yellow snow our parents warned us about. This was the only point during the movie when I wanted to gag, because just watching it was so gross.

The movie itself isn’t trying to be a movie, but a series of skits and stunts that rely on the fan base of the show to bring in the audience. While the movie is full of warnings, cops at the entrance to the theatre to confirm your age, still parents brought in kids that must have been as young as five years old. Politicians scorn video games and movies like this for corrupting America’s youth, well your argument is about to eat crow when you realize that parents are bringing children into these movies you stuck up pricks!

Jackass is not about acting, plot, or story, it is about going to have fun, and I really think the movie gives you just what it promises, stuff you would never see on TV and a way to escape the terrors of real life to just have some fun. It succeeded on all accounts in my opinion, and when you read other reviews from “big” publications that claim it to be the “worst movie of the year” remember that the reviewers there don’t have the perspective to see this movie for what it really is, and while they try to make it stand up to cinematic standards, this movie can’t be handled that way, in my opinion this was a great movie, and there is no arguing that.