For over 25 years, we’ve had the privilege of watching a group of stupid guys do stupid shit. In Jackass: Best and Last, we get the opportunity to see just how the stupendously idiotic and magnificently important franchise began – with archived footage of Johnny Knoxville shooting himself in the chest while wearing nothing more than a small bulletproof vest with some Hustlers shoved inside. You could argue that with that idea (a very stupid one indeed!), a complete generation of moviegoers was changed forever by Jackass.
Dating back to 2000, when the Jackass television series premiered on MTV, the iconic crew of Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave Englund, Ehren McGhehey, and Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuña has been performing some of the gnarliest stunts one could imagine. Of course, the group wouldn’t be complete without including Bam Margera, who disbanded from the crew due to substance abuse, and the late Ryan Dunn. This unique band of brothers represents more than just ill-advised sketches testing how much pain someone can take. They symbolize the idea of a generation born and raised on two very important things: boredom and cameras.
Besides sharing a bond as part of the counter-culture skateboard movement of the early 90s, they all had a camera and an unyielding sense of boredom to contend with. This is meaningful in connection with Jackass: Best and Last because we may never see a group of guys raised the same way again. Constantly filming themselves, retaining their sense of 13-year-old boyishness that seemingly never dissipated for nearly three generations. During a year in which franchises and blockbusters were the winners at the box office, the style of handheld, gritty filmmaking was a stark difference to what moviegoers had come to expect. It seems easy and even common now, but was anything but at the time. It effectively cemented the idea that homemade videos could be enough to constitute a box office hit.
In Best and Last, it truly does feel like a sendoff. Contrary to everything Knoxville has alluded to before about that installment of Jackass being the final one, his overwhelming emotionality during a behind-the-scenes walk to the set and an electric chair skit seem to confirm this really is the end. And if that’s the case, there couldn’t be a more fitting sendoff. While Best and Last retains its true identity as a clip-style sequence of painful practices and senseless skits, the combination of old footage – some of which is extended to include sequences with previously unseen participants or additional reactions – and new footage blends into a piercing final chapter.
And speaking of piercing, perhaps the best, and most telling of which era of Jackass we are experiencing, is a headline skit featuring a humanoid robot named Larry giving Steve-O a prostate exam. “I guess this is what Jackass looks like when we’re fifty!” uttered director Jeff Tremaine as the group prepared as best they could for what was about to transpire. And he isn’t wrong. The group has evolved over the last few years, beginning with Jackass Forever (2022), which added new members including Zach Holmes, Sean “Poopies” McInerny, Rachel Wolfson, and Jasper Dolphin. Welcome, albeit routinely underutilized additions, that have injected a new-age sense of stupidity into the franchise.
Among the robotic prostate exam, new skits include ‘The Escape Room From Hell’ in which Danger Ehren literally blacks out in an electric chair and forgets what’s going on, along with ‘The Electric Balance Beam’ and ‘Hot Potato With Zach’s Butt’ featuring famed actor Paul Walter Hauser as a guest. The amount of new footage is sufficient justification for another movie installment. They aren’t top-tier Jackass stunts (yet, at least), but they are worthy nonetheless.
As for the included old footage, for those who grew up watching the franchise or have a special emotional connection to it in one way or another, it serves as a living time machine to experience the Jackass of old. Many are connected to the era in which the television show was just getting its start, finally exposing some of the gnarliest, most infantile experiments possible, many of which haven’t seen the light of day. This includes one where Knoxville dresses up in an orange jumpsuit from the LA County jail and tries to buy a saw at a local hardware store to take off his handcuffs, only for the cops to be called and for things to take a tough turn. For diehards, this concoction of archived footage is a stellar trip down memory lane.
All in all, Jackass: Best and Last is a gnarly end of an era. Sure, the end of a cinematic era without a doubt – the film opened to less than $20 million over the weekend for the first time in franchise history – but more importantly, the end of a cultural era. A cultural era not fueled by likes, views, and social media fame, but more importantly by boredom, friendship, and the need to see what kind of ungodly things you can stick up your butt just because you can. It’s an emotional and successful sendoff for the Jackass crew who seem to be done for good. As the legendary Vera Lynn song announces with melancholy over the credits, “We’ll meet again. Don’t know where. Don’t know when.”
Here’s to Jackass and the successful send-off with Best and Last!
Review Courtesy of Ethan Simmie
Feature Image Credit to Paramount Pictures