Mothers throughout this great nation are collectively sucking in their breath and grabbing their pre-teen children with vice-like grips as Jackass makes it way off the small screen and somersaults, like one giant fat man on fire, on to movie screens across the country.

The two-minute trailer for the movie starts like every Jackass episode, warning viewers and their “dumb little buddies” not to attempt any stunts they see, as they are performed by professionals.

Professionals?

Since when do an out-of-work actor and his skater friends constitute “professionals?” The Jackass boys started doing their thing on the pages of the skateboarding magazine “Big Brother.” They were just a bunch of California skate punks looking to make each other laugh, but what they found was a whole lotta cash.

Which makes you wonder about the intelligence of the American audience that devoured Jackass in its MTV heyday, and about the new group of kids that will crowd, push and bodyslam its way into a theater near you this weekend.

Inevitably, some crazy preteen like 13-yr-old Jason Lind will try and reproduce one of the movie stunts to the delight of his equally pre-pubescent friends, only to find himself in some hospital bed fighting off infection and missing his earth science final exam. Lind covered himself in gasoline and lit a match in early 2001 while his friends cheered him on.

Lind’s parents cried foul on Johnny Knoxville and his Jackass cohorts, blaming them for their son’s pyro tendencies. But where were they when their son ran off to an empty field with a gallon of gasoline and some matches? And why wasn’t he ever taught not to play with fire?

It’s no wonder Jackass: the Movie has to run a warning prior to the trailer. Who watches Knoxville and suddenly has the desire to throw himself into a pool of feces? Who really wishes he could be the one to walk a tightrope over a pool of alligators wearing nothing but a jock strap?

Which is probably the whole appeal of Jackass in the first place. Most of us don’t want to be sadistic, but we all don’t mind being a little masochistic now and then. In other words, very few of us want to participate, but all of us just want to watch. Dirty, aren’t we?

WARNING: The following stunts were performed by professionals, so for your safety and the protection of those around you, Paramount Pictures and MTV films insist that neither you nor your dumb little buddies attempt any of what you’re about to see.