Featuring anacondas, leeches, screams of both pain and euphoria and a great deal of vomit, the movie Jackass: Number Two lived up to the raucous reputation of the series - and then some.
The Social Planning and Events Committee Film Society held a sneak preview of the second installment of Jackass: The Movie yesterday at Annenberg's Zellerbach Theatre.
The movie's stars, Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera - as well as its director, Jeff Tremaine - were at the theater to introduce the movie. They arrived about 30 minutes after the event was scheduled to start, and the Mask and Wig band played in the meantime.
Once on stage, they wished the audience a "happy viewing," but not before warning that the movie was "disgusting" and not for the faint of heart. They apologized in advance for making anyone watch the movie to begin with.
The theater was filled to its capacity of about 600, some of whom said they had been attracted by the free tickets, others by a chance to meet the stars. But many, judging from the excitement even before the movie began, were just die-hard Jackass fans.
There was hardly a moment of silence from the opening credits to the very end of the film as the audience oscillated between laughter, screeches, gasps and - many times - loud cries of disbelief.
Engineering senior Gerry Campion said the whole experience was "very funny and very Jackass-y."
College junior Megan Carlin said she was happy to see the movie before its release date, which she said makes her appreciate "the benefits of a being in a big university and city."
"I really liked it. I'm glad that I came," she added.
College junior Dylan McGarry, one of the organizers of the event, said he was very impressed with the large turnout.
He added that the audience was drawn mostly by word of mouth to the showing.
Jackass: Number Two is scheduled to be released on Sept. 22 across the country.
The first movie in the series, Jackass: The Movie, was a 2002 adaptation of the MTV series of the same name which featured dangerous stunts and gross-out antics. That movie went on to gross over $64 million at the U.S. box office, according to the Internet Movie Database.
