Back in the late nineties, MTV started screening a show, made by a group of friends made up mainly from the US skateboarding fraternity, showing them hitting, throwing and generally hurting each other in as many interesting and innovative ways as possible. From dropping pool balls onto each others groins from the top of a building, to making vom-lettes, to the simple act of hitting each other with any item that came to hand, Jackass became an overnight sensation in the States, eventually making its way over to this side of the pond, and gradually spawning a slew of imitators - most notably, the boys from Dirty Sanchez. However, none of these quite seeped into the public consciousness enough to warrant their own movie.

In 2002, the Jackass crew - Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Ryan Dunn, Preston Lacey, Ehren McGhehey, Jason 'Wee Man' Acuna and friends - hit the big screen in what is essentially a souped-up version of the regular Jackass show. Containing stunts too dangerous/hardcore/stupid to show on regular television, and with numerous warnings about not trying any of the skits at home, the movie shifted from the sublime to the ridiculous quickly and assuredly, and found itself hitting the Top 10 chart on both sides of the Atlantic. With nudity (all male, ladies!), swearing which could never get past the censor in America, and plenty of gratuitous violence, Jackass appeals to the immature child in almost everyone (well, at least everyone with a Y-chromosome). What follows here is a round up of the main skits - it's a little list-tastic, but should give you some flavour of what you're getting into!

First up, comes the Rent-A-Car Crash Up Derby. Knoxville rents a car from a dealership, then proceeds, after much modifying of the window smashing, spray painting and support strut adding variety, to put it in a demolition derby, in which the vehicle is smashed, crashed and bashed into submission, finally meeting its demise when another car mounts the bonnet and almost drives all the way through the windscreen. But the best is yet to come, as Knoxville delivers the car back to the hire shop, claiming to have hit a dog, having been drunk when driving it, and trying to convince the dealer that he should incur the cost of repair and replacement. With the mangled car in the parking lot, Johnny still has the gall to claim ' I returned it with a full tank of gas.' Genius.

The pace slows a little as we join the boys in a hotel room - just them, some beers, and a muscle stimulator. Attached to various parts of their bodies, and turned up as high as it will go, it looks pretty painful - especially when stuck on the gooch (if you don't know, either ask someone who's seen the movie, or just accept that it's probably better that you don't!)

Golf Cart Antics comes next. Two golf carts are commandeered and driven at speed around a miniature golf course, jumping hills and bunkers, crashing into chain link fences, and going through the various obstacles that litter the course - as well as ramming each other as often as possible. However, this skit almost came to an horrific end, when the cart piloted by Dunn and Knoxville attempted to jump a bunker and caught itself on a giant ceramic pig, catapulting it onto its roof. Knoxville sustained whiplash from this stunt, and said in a later interview with FHM that he felt lucky to have come out of it alive.

In the first of the scenes filmed on the streets of Tokyo, we meet Party Boy for the first time. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jackass, Party Boy is an alter ego of Chris Pontius who likes to dance to infectious party music in unusual places - here in a Japanese department store - in just a posing pouch. Childish, pointless, but very, very funny, this works incredibly well with the polite Japanese - particularly the security guard who can only blow his whistle as Party Boy steals his hat and dances around him like a loon.

Alligator Tightrope is up next. In a truly stupid move, Steve-O, with no prior tightrope experience, attempts to traverse a high wire above a pool containing the hungry reptiles. Really dumb, but really funny, especially when he sticks a chicken carcass out of the back of his thong and dangles to allow the 'gator to grab the tasty morsel. Ironically, the closest he comes to being injured is as he leaves the pool - almost stepping on one of the Triassic throwbacks in the process.

Pity the loving parents that brought Bam Margera into this world. Phil and April take such abuse from their son, all in the name of Jackass, that it's surprising they a) even give their consent to allow it to go out, and b) haven't yet disowned/killed their offspring. Despite his father having to be up for work at 5am, Bam decides it's a good idea to take a dustbin full of fireworks into their room and let them off - while a tagline warning of the dangers appears at the bottom of the screen. Then, after setting off alarms and waking up the neighbourhood dogs, he goes a step further - as Phil gets in his van to go to work, another load of fireworks go off in the back, lighting up the van, and testing Phil's patience once more.

Ever wondered what would happen if you tried to go to the toilet in one of the display models in a hardware store? No, me either. Luckily (?) for us, the Jackass boys have, and Dave England rises to the challenge, sitting in full view of everyone and doing the deed. The first disgusting thing in the movie, but not the last.

A short vignette next introduces 'Clipper-Cam,' where turning your back for one second leads to getting your hair shaved. Let's be honest, we've all done this before - we just didn't think to film it or use the music from Psycho for added effect!

Trying to cross a roomful of mousetraps is not my idea of fun, but Ehren McGhehey takes them on. After traversing the first couple, he sets one off, which starts a chain reaction of hundreds of traps leaping in the air and snapping on whatever they can - particularly impressive is the trap thrown from off-screen at the very end of the trial, which snaps somewhere very sensitive indeed.

Bungee - leaping from something with elastic to protect you. Wedgie - pulling the hem of underwear up so that it encroaches upon the posterior. Bungee-Wedgie - figure it out. Ouch.

Knoxville then faces one of the most dangerous challenges, as he travels to be shot by George Hruska of ALS Technologies, who manufacture 'less-lethal' ammunition. Travelling at 250 feet per second, the projectile he is hit with would kill if it hit him in the chest, so Knoxville takes it in the stomach. For just about the only time in the film, the pain that Knoxville seems to experience does not appear to have any fun behind it at all - there is always a hint of laughter in the pain in every other scene - and, in a shot taken two days later, we see why, as he reveals a deep purple bruise on his abdomen. This looks supremely painful, and is actually more interesting than funny.

Would you ever take on a kickboxing champion? How about a female kickboxing champion? Think you might have a chance? Well, Ryan Dunn knew that he wouldn't, and yet had a go anyway, being absolutely destroyed by the Double-K Light-Heavyweight Champion. This is a vicious beating as, watched by all his gloating friends, he lives up to his pre-match prediction and gets his 'ass kicked by a girl'.

As the swearing no longer has to be beeped, Bam decides it would be funny to get his sweet mother April to say the f-word, and what better way than to leave a live alligator in the kitchen? Seriously, that's his plan. It works, of course, and his poor mum drops the dreaded f-bomb on camera - but it has to be said that the damage it must have caused the poor woman was probably not quite worth it.

Possibly the sickest part of the movie is filmed in the boys hotel room. It's the only part at which everyone who I know that has seen the film has had to look away, and the reason for at is evident from the title - Paper Cuts. That's right, the boys voluntarily allow themselves to be cut, in the webbing between their fingers and toes, and then at the sides of the mouth. Seriously, this is really hard to watch - probably because it's the only pain that pretty much everyone has actually experienced, so we know just how much it hurts.

Department store boxing features a cameo from super-heavyweight boxer Butterbean, who, incidentally, holds the California state record for quickest ever knockout - 18 seconds, including ten-count. Going into a department store, they proceed to batter each other, until one man can no longer continue - one guess which one it is. The loser is then shown snoring on the floor, before we get to see a close up of the gash in his head as it is stitched up.

For me, the funniest part of the movie comes toward the end, when the boys take to a golf course armed with an air horn. The abuse, not to mention golf clubs and balls, hurled at them by the irate golfers is priceless, as are the continued apologies and lame excuses that they come up with for their antics.

Finally, Ryan Dunn carries out one of the film's most ridiculous, ill-advised, and downright damaging stunts. Armed with a tube of lubricant, a condom, and a little blue car, he proceeds to boldly go where no one has gone before, and introduce the car somewhere it was never meant to be played with. Not only that, but he then has to go to a doctor's office to have x-rays taken, showing the car in all its internal glory, and utterly compounding his embarrassment. And he really was walking gingerly…

On top of these scenes, there are plenty of other skits, ranging from the pointless (fat man in see through swimming trunks), to the hilarious (pandas running through the streets of night-time Tokyo), to the nauseating (can you imagine what might make the yellow snowcone yellow?), all of which add up to a solidly entertaining 85 minutes.

The thing is, that's not all. This DVD boasts an incredible array of extra features. First up is the obligatory commentary, although in this case there are in fact two - one by Johnny Knoxville, director Jeff Tremaine and cinematographer Dimitry Elyashkevich, and one by the entire Jackass cast. Both tracks are enjoyable, although in very different ways - the former being more informative, while the latter is the kind of commentary that will probably end up on the many films I will, of course, end up making in the future - basically just a load of guys sitting around laughing and joking at the film, and not really adding much to the experience, but being very funny in the process.

There is then a making-of featurette, produced by MTV to accompany the film on its release. As such, it's a standard 24 minute long affair delving behind the scenes on the shoot, as well as exploring the difficulties encountered in transferring the show from the televisual medium to the cinema. The featurette also focuses slightly more on the individuals, featuring short interviews with the main players, although unfortunately, it doesn't shed too much light on why they do the things they do, which would have probably been a more interesting route to take. What is fun to see, though, is just how difficult it must be to work with these guys - no one is safe from their pranks, and yet there seems to be a real sense of affection between cast and crew alike.

As well as these, there is 27 minutes of additional footage, which is always good value, although again it is more clowning around than anything that was ever seriously going to make the final cut of the movie, and a vast array of outtakes, which is in itself pretty funny - the whole point of the film is that they hurt themselves and each other, and yet somehow they were able to mess even that up! Much of the outtakes is taken up by the incredible difficulties the boys seem to have with their few simple lines introducing each skit, just proving that brains really aren't all that necessary for random acts of wanton stupidity.

The theatrical trailer is also included, as is the norm these days, even though I've never really known why (we've already bought the film, after all), as are two music videos - 'We Want Fun' by Andrew WK, and 'If You're Gonna Be Dumb' by Roger Alan Wade, both of which feature in the closing credits of the film itself. On top of this, they also throw in cast and crew biographies and photo and poster galleries, which don't really add much to the disc, but are nice enough for those who are interested in still shots on a DVD.

I picked up this DVD two years ago for £7, and I know you can get it even cheaper in most places now. It's available on eBay from around £2.99, and for £5.95 from DVD.co.uk, and is well worth picking up for that sort of price. Particularly handy for a boys night in with a few beers, this is a movie that you can watch over and over again - mainly because, no matter how many times you see it, there'll always be something amusing about a midget kicking himself in the head, or grown men needlessly pole vaulting over palm trees, and having whale sharks attack their nether regions.

As a finale to the Jackass series, and indeed the whole oeuvre that it spawned, this is a sterling piece of work. Sickening, violent, disturbing, but most of all, incredibly funny, this is definitely one for those of us with a childish, puerile side.

Jackass The Movie
Running Time: 85 mins (approx.)
Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound
Widescreen