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Whether 3-D is a good thing or a bad thing, I'll not argue here. I will tell you that it certainly makes Jackass 3-D a marvelous thing to see, even if only intermittently. The five or ten blithe moments where Jackass really grabs 3-D by the balls border on ecstatic triumphs. At the very least, when you see Johnny Knoxville fire a limber, rubbery dildo straight into the camera in ultra-slow-motion 3-D, the pink tube quivering like it contains the full force of machismo that has been prepared, consumed, and shat all over this picture by its seven or eight moronic male leads, you will question whether the separate artistic media of "performance art" and "cinema" have just collided in synthesis that beggars their previous, un-unified efforts.

Yes, the opening sequence of this video, and its far superior, guns-a'-blazin' closing - which dance in and out of time and space as walls are exploding and paintballs are mushroom-clouding the ripe bellies of overage men - approach a kind of visual poetry that has surfaced in neither Avatar nor Cave of Forgotten Dreams. In fact, I thought often of Herzog while watching Jackass 3-D; or in any event, I thought of him when the bearded fellow got sling-shot down a slip-n'-slide in a wheelbarrow, aiming (unsuccessfully) for an inflatable pool lying just beyond a makeshift ramp. There's a truth in Jackass that can only be found in fistfights or very good porno. And it's in 3-D.

A lot of it's pretty terrible. I have a sympathetic vomit issue, which I apparently share with Lance Bangs, who pukes his way through this picture (even onto his camera) while trying to document it. Even in my weakness, however, I could not help but remark that firing Steve-O hundreds of feet into the air in a shit-loaded Biffy on bungee cords, capturing the lopsided dance of gravity and feces within the deathly blue coffin on two separate 3-D cameras, while five separate crew members voided their lunches or their bowels just from seeing the fucking thing, has a kind of mastery to it that completely eclipses any of its status as a brainless stunt. Yes, it's a brainless stunt; yes, it's disgusting and stupid. But cripes, to conceive and execute such a thing? Beyond my means, certainly.

The Rocky, the High Five, the Sweat Suit Cocktail; it all sort of blends together and the movie goes on and on and on. I could leave about half of it on a table, and I have no sensible explanation for why any of these people are still doing this, at all. What do they get paid? What do they do the rest of the time? I'm sure there are Jackass scholars who could tell me. But why?

Knoxville looks old in this picture. I noticed that he stands, even when stunts are not being performed, with his hands draped unconsciously over his balls. He has been doing this too long; now it gets interesting. Knoxville dresses up as a cranky senior in this film, and tongues his granddaughter and crashes a scooter through a plate-glass window. Unintentionally sanguine, these images border on meta-text. When out of his prosthetic, there is a ghostly thinness to Knoxville's features that no Joker laugh can dispell; this is a man who's seen things, and been changed by the seeing, and who is just as likely to get beheaded by a rocket-propelled midget as live to a ripe old age. But say he did live a good while longer, and say they keep making these movies? By Jackass 7-Up, this thing might evolve into something a hell of a lot bigger than the obnoxious pranks of men who used to be young.