You have to give credit where credit is due and while I hate to say it, when America's Funniest Home Videos came out back in 1989 it started something of a revolution. The success of the show caught the attention of every idiot in America with a camcorder and soon people were filming their stunts and accidents hoping that they'd get some cash. While Johnny Knoxville may not have been inspired by the show when he helped create Jackass, you do have to admit that there are several similarities. Of course instead of getting hit in the nuts by soccer balls, Knoxville and the gang were piercing their butt-cheeks together and eating their own vomit.

To say that Jackass was not family entertainment would be a grave understatement, since quite frankly you had to have a disorder of some kind to find it appealing. I appreciate practical jokes and shock gags as much as the next guy, but some of this stuff was downright took sick to be funny (case in point: the omelet skit). Of course there was quite the fanfare for the show and copycats arose from the ranks; one of which is a show from Hong Kong known as Chiseen.

For the most part the concepts between Chiseen and Jackass are nearly identical. You have a group of individuals who will stop at no lengths to humiliate and mutilate themselves for the sake of a cheap laugh. The real kicker here though is that the show actually features known talent to fans of Asian cinema. As you watch the DVD you'll see Michelle Yeoh, Daniel Wu, and Sam Lee amidst the rabble. It's kind of a strange thing to see "stars" appearing in something like this, but then again when you get right down to it I guess it's really not.

Presented on this disc from Tai Seng are three episodes from the show including the pilot, "Full Episode", and "3rd Cut". There is a variety of content here and many different kinds of skits, so as you'd imagine most of the stuff is hit or miss. Many clips are repeated throughout these and quite often the gags run a little too long, usually to the point where they just aren't funny anymore. For instance there is a skit involving a gimp running around the city with a bloodied tank-top and handcuffs. Yeah it's really funny at first, but gradually it starts to get old as the show keeps going back to it. Stuff like that happens a lot in Chiseen, but there is some unique stuff that actually gets funnier as it goes along.

I particularly got a kick out of seeing Daniel Wu ride around on a pink big wheeled tricycle. It's not that he's just like riding along the sidewalk or anything; he's actually going through town on busy streets and through gangs of bikers. At one point he even rolls downhill in the middle of traffic until a wheel falls off and he almost gets hit.

A couple more favorites of mine were the "Wok Boarding", "Late for Work", and "Book of Pain". In "Wok Boarding" the group slides down an escalator and gets dragged around by a moped while sitting in a wok. "Late for Work" was funny because of the shock value involved. A beautiful woman goes on the subway system and begins brushing her teeth, but the real "OMG" moment is when she strips down to her underwear and begins to shave her legs. Of course neither of those two touches the sheer vulgarity of "Book of Pain" which features a guy (Min Yoo) getting tortured by things such as some wasabi to the eye, a bamboo stick to the ass, and pellets from a BB gun.

Needless to say this DVD will be appreciated more by fans of Jackass than anybody else, though if you are a fan of Asian cinema AND Jackass, you will be in heaven. I personally didn't really buy into the show aside from a few skits and got annoyed by how many things were repeated. For the average viewer like me you can easily go on living without seeing this DVD, though if you enjoy this kind of thing you'll probably want to look into it. After all, there is nothing quite like seeing someone eating a bowl full of silk worms and then puking them up now, is there?

Chiseen is presented with a 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio and features the image quality of a home video. There were plenty of flaws that popped up during my viewing such as grain, speckle, edge enhancement, and aliasing. At many points the image was also extremely soft, poorly lit and featured a slight motion blur. There were some moments where the image was clear, but I can't honestly say that they were crystal clear. I suppose you don't come to a show like this and expect the best digital transfer in the world, but some better quality would have been appreciated.

The audio for Chiseen is presented with an English 2.0 language track. For a show that was produced overseas I was surprised to learn that this wasn't a dubbed track. There is some Chinese tossed into the mix and unfortunately there are no subtitles available to cover what's being said. The quality is just about as good as you'd expect it to be considering the manner in which the show was filmed. There is no real directionality to the audio, the volume pitch is a little off at times and the sound also features some static.

On the disc there are two trailers for the show which are essentially the same, though set to different music. There is also a series of interviews with some of the crew such as Jack Lando, Daniel Wu, and Min Yoo. Sam Lee and Ken Wong give a little lecture about the ins and outs of wok boarding and eventually the entire group gets on camera. Overall the interviews last for about 45 minutes and come across as very personal and candid.

In order to truly appreciate Chiseen, you have to be a fan of stuff like Jackass. Otherwise you'll be either bored or offended by what you see here, though to be fair it's not as vulgar as Jackass was. I did get a few laughs out of it and was pleased to see that Daniel Wu had taken such a big role in the project, but overall it didn't win me over. Unless you're a Wu fan and like seeing people hurt themselves you can pretty much skip this one.

Check out more of my reviews here. Head on over to my anime blog as well for random musings and reviews of anime, manga, and stuff from Japan!