What Did You Think Was Going to Happen?

About halfway through Jackass 3D, Chris Pontius sticks the bottom half of his face in a diorama where a couple of scorpions are crawling around. Seconds later, bitten and stung, Pontius is questioning his motives for partaking in such an inane stunt, and he's asked, "What did you think was going to happen?" Exactly. Anyone considering seeing this latest film in the Jackass series must ask himself a similar question. After all, this is a movie in which the marquee stunt is something called "Poo Cocktail Supreme," which features Steve-O sitting in a poo-filled port-a-potty that gets flung up on bungee cords and shaken around a bit (and yes, there are cameras inside the port-a-potty so you can see not just Steve-O's reactions, but also the poo flying all over).

If you enjoy this kind of gross-out schadenfreude humor (and I do), then you'll find Jackass 3D to be an enjoyable time at the movies. If not, well, then this is not the movie for you (and you already know that). That said, gags like "The Rocky," "Roller Buffalo," "High Five," "Lamborghini Tooth Pull," "Beehive Tetherball," ''Sweatsuit Cocktail,'' and an untitled midget barfight (featuring Best Supporting Actor contender Jason "Wee Man" Acuna) are funny, but not as high-larious as some of the stuff seen in the first and second film of the trilogy (and the MTV series). In addition, though this Jackass makes some amusingly gratuitous use of the 3D technology, overall, there's really nothing here that wouldn't have been just as funny in 2D. I laughed till I cried while watching Jackass 3D. "It had danger. It had puke. It had shit — and sex appeal," as Pontius and Steve-O say late in the film. But I still left the theater thinking this was not the strongest film in the trilogy. So that's why I'm only giving Jackass 3D a B–.