Jackass: Best and Last Review: One Last Tap

Knoxville and the crew are fearless with their bodies but bashful with their feelings in their raucous, well-built farewell Jackass: Best and Last.

To prep, I revisited the original from 2002 and was struck by how young everyone looked. Knoxville was twenty-nine when the MTV show hit, the crew broke and hungry and willing to do anything to a friend’s body for a laugh. Jackass: Best and Last knows that kind of fearlessness has an expiration date. The setup never changes: stunts, pranks, and on-set talking heads, and it blends fresh mayhem, greatest hits, and footage MTV never allowed to air.

Director Jeff Tremaine opens with a Spike Jonze sequence set to “Holding Out for a Hero,” each guy recreating a signature disaster, capped by Wee Man (Jason Acuña) swinging a mallet where no mallet should swing. The craftsmanship surprised me: the blend of old and new is seamless, broken by brief pauses for the ending that only Knoxville lets land. The magic, as always, is the camaraderie.

Sidelined from the biggest stunts by the broken ribs, concussion, and brain hemorrhage from Jackass Forever, Knoxville works as the silver-haired ringleader, egging everyone on as the ship’s captain. The clear second is Chris Pontius, stripping down as he has for two decades and going fully, gloriously unclothed this time, and high jumping in slow motion. There is so much of Pontius on screen that the ratings board must have billed Paramount by the inch.

Steve-O, his voice sounding like he gargles wet sandpaper, wants to be the film’s MVP and earns a title I will politely abbreviate as Most Visible Poop. Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Dave England, and “Danger Ehren” McGhehey each get their turn being punched, dropped, and slimed. Among the newer faces, Sean “Poopies” McInerney makes the strongest impression, while Rachel Wolfson is harder to figure. She is introduced, then watches from the sidelines. Bringing a woman into Jackass should feel like progress; here, it plays closer to tokenism.

That points to the one stunt these men never attempt. They will get naked on a dare and sit beneath a heavier man’s bare backside without a flinch, then go shy the second real feeling enters the room. I kept waiting for a real word about Ryan Dunn, the cast member killed in a 2011 drunk-driving crash and a foundation of this circus, and it simply isn’t there. A man this central to the franchise deserved a proper goodbye, and the film doesn’t give him one. A hoped-for reconciliation with Bam Margera never arrives, his presence limited to archive footage.

Behind it sits an enormous crew, since anything can be filmed at any second. Cinematographer Dimitry Elyashkevich shoots most of it, with operators like Lance Bangs and Rick Kosick catching the chaos, and Tony Gardner’s Oscar-nominated prosthetic makeup selling Knoxville’s Bad Grandpa alter ego in the clips the film revisits. This is also the first Jackass film in 2.39:1 widescreen, and the extra width gives the mayhem a cinematic frame.

None of this is built to win awards. It is built to entertain and make money, and across five films it has grossed more than half a billion dollars. Made for around ten million, Jackass: Best and Last will turn its modest profit even with the softest opening of the series. Unlike franchises that announce a farewell and slink back when a studio waves a check, I believe Knoxville is genuinely tired. They are older now, with kids and grandkids, and the body keeps a tab it always collects.

Did they save the best for last? It doesn’t really matter. Every Jackass film is the same beautiful, stupid animal: no plot, no story, just ninety minutes of friends hurting each other for our amusement. I laughed the whole way through, and if you have laughed before, nothing here breaks the spell. If it has never been your thing, there are gentler options that don’t involve a robot performing a rectal exam with peanut butter for lube.

Jackass: Best and Last is now available to watch in US theaters, and in UK & Irish cinemas, and globally in theatres.