You can't really call it a plot, so here's the overarching artistic theme of ''Jackass: The Movie,'' which finds Knoxville and his crew back for more dangerous, disturbing, and just-plain-stupid stunts: Imagine ''Jackass'' the MTV show stretched to 90 minutes. It also boasts a climactic stunt of such lunacy and intricacy it would make Rube Goldberg smile, and offers a visit to Japan. ''The boys couldn't have acted uglier,'' Knoxville says of the overseas jaunt. ''The hotel put us on quadruple secret probation. Finally they called the cops, but they're so nice over there. It's really tough to get in trouble in Tokyo, obviously.''
Not so tough in the US of A. The TV show attracted controversy last year when kids were injured in copycat stunts and a senator crusaded against mature (or in this case, immature) content aimed at young 'uns. ''We'd gotten away with as much as we could on TV,'' says Knoxville, who also has roles in this summer's ''Men in Black II'' and ''Deuces Wild.'' ''With our savior Joseph Lieberman protecting the minds of the youths of America, everything got very tense. It put a lot of pressure on MTV, which trickled down to us. We were like: Today is a good day to quit.''
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