One of my greatest childhood memories, like many children on the eastern side of the U.S., was trekking with the family down to magical Orlando, Florida to be fully immersed into the pre-pubescent euphoria of the Indiana Jones stunt show spectacular, travelling back in time with Doc Brown and all the many treasures that only Walt Disney World and Universal Studios can produce. One of the memory gems I can pull out from this cherished family vacation is how completely blown my mind was at the T2 3D: Battle Across Time show at Universal. I honestly felt like one of the stunned audience members in the laughable My Bloody Valentine or Saw 3D trailers, where if I just reached out I could touch Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Fast forward to 2010, mostly miserable in a theater due to it being filled to capacity with twentysomethings masquerading as some kind of hybrid of scene kid/Jersey Shore douchebag, I am ripped back into my childhood. Now, without a history of child molestation in my life, if someone was to ever say that feeling like a giant dildo was about to smash through my skull in glorious 3-D would jerk me back into my childhood like something from a Worther's Original commercial, I might feel a little uncomfortable. However, in the latest installment of the Jackass films, the perfect, gimmicky, trashy, use of a 3-D rubber sex toy being blasted out of a homemade canon through the screen did just that.
The above example is just one of the reasons that I have come to the conclusion that Jackass 3D is the perfect film to represent the 3-D medium. While the market is being saturated with effects heavy, overbudgeted , underwritten, overrated pieces of cinema like James Cameron's Avatar, including even Martin Scorsese currently working on a 3-D picture, it gets hard not to become sore and avoidant of all things outside of two dimensions. Coming alongside the announcement that Scorsese was going to do his upcoming The Invention of Hugo Cabret in 3-D, desperation struck the hardest with the realization that sadly, Cameron had changed cinema like he predicted his $500 million film would. That change however, is one in which even the masters would trade artistry for a buck. And what about the exploitation, trash and underground horror filmmakers that 3-D was meant for? Where are they to reclaim the art of using a gimmick?
Well, like a beacon from Heaven or at the very least a coked up William Castle, here comes Johnny Knoxville and company riding the proverbial white horse of salvation into the theater to give me hope for 3-D by a constant array of body fluids, full frontal male nudity, self mutilation, shock, schlock and near bestiality. The movie is by no means perfect, nor is every skit even funny, yet the ones that work, work well. However, the 3-D is better than anything I saw in Avatar, and a scene by Dave England reminiscent of the Japanese tub girl meme was the first time I believe I've actually been shocked at a film since my first viewing of the chicken scene from John Waters' trash manifesto, Pink Flamingos. So here's to you Jackass for bringing 3-D back to where it belongs, nestled safely in trash cinema.
