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DVD Review: Bumfights

How to make yourself stupider for $19.95.

by B.D. | 2002.10.19

The mail order DVD Bumfights is part Jackass, part Fight Club and all waste of money. Sure, an hour’s worth of demented hobos, street fights and destructive pranks sounds good in theory, but the execution of said shenanigans falls far short of being genuinely entertaining.

Despite the title, Bumfights contains scant footage of bums fighting. The bulk of the DVD falls into three categories: derelicts being paid to hurt themselves, angry white kids fighting in backyards, and sickening things the filmmakers happened to be on hand to capture. Although there is a mild attempt to tie everything together in some sort of Project Mayhem anarchist knot, it’s really just a bunch of shit thrown together.

The highlight of the film is Roofus, a toothless tramp that goes along with pretty much whatever the film’s creators think up. Roofus is a lunatic, but a game lunatic. His typical appearance is as follows -- Roofus executes an obscene pratfall, lies prone in the dirt for a few moments, looks balefully at the camera and then displays his bloodied hands. The only redemption for the sad sight of a deranged vagrant being run through the gauntlet by a bunch of sniggering teenagers is the fact that Roofus is so enthusiastic. He roars with an indecipherable emotion (rage/joy/fear?) and bashes his head into some new target.

Perhaps the most irritating element of the video is the incessant snickering of the cameramen who attempt to muffle their laughter as hobos run into walls and leap into dumpsters. While the clowns on Jackass actually put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of our amusement, the makers of Bumfights stay giggling behind the camera as the demented bums slide down cliffs, smash things with axes and brand themselves with “Bumfights” tattoos. The element of kids profiteering off the insanity and helplessness of the indigent is impossible to ignore. In fact, the only time we see the face of anyone involved with the DVD’s production is the Crocodile Hunter segments, in which a Steve Irwin impersonator creeps up on sleeping homeless and duct-tapes the disoriented men. To his credit, the man who plays the “bumhunter” is so genuine in his attempts to stay in character that the skits are fairly enjoyable.

The vast majority of the fight footage is taken from what appear to be organized “fight clubs”. The hordes of testosterone-fueled rejects from the casting of Bully engage in long, sloppy and ultimately boring skirmishes. Most of the fistfights are so pedestrian that the viewer seldom is inflicted with that nauseating feeling that often lingers in the pit of the stomach when watching human beings senselessly hurt each other. In around twenty minutes of assorted fights, there are probably about a dozen clean blows landed.

Bumfights also includes such pleasures as a man defecating on the sidewalk, a dude with a tattooed penis and numerous clips of roadkill. None of this material has anything to do with bums or fighting or bumfighting. And little of the material is remotely interesting or entertaining. The filmmakers’ lack of cleverness is never more apparent than in these segments. It’s possible to get away with moronic base humor when there are drunken vagrants running amok, but when it comes to anything even slightly more subtle, Bumfights utterly lacks the underlying irony and wittiness of even Tom Green or South Park.

We understand the sole purpose of purchasing DVD’s like Bumfights is to serve as a conversation piece while drinking with friends on a slow Thursday night. Unfortunately, all Bumfights accomplishes is making the viewer feel slightly stupider for having watched it.

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