For twenty-five years (and some change) the Jackass crew, led by their captain, the daring (or just daft) Johnny Knoxville, have made a name for themselves by hurting themselves, with a wide array of stunts across an MTV series and a bevy of feature films.
This fifth main instalment, a sequel to 2022’s Jackass Forever, is reportedly the last of the bunch, but as Knoxville himself admits, even after all this time, the gang ‘haven’t learned a goddamn thing’.
‘You know, the worse the experience is, the better it looks on-screen’
While I’ve not seen much of Jackass in the past – just the aforementioned Forever, which I was rather mixed on – the formula is clear to me. There’s never really been a plot or an arc to the films; rather than beating about the bush or trying to integrate each set-piece into a narrative, they’re refreshingly simple in getting to the point.
We’re given a brief explanation of the act at hand (usually something awful where the cast member involved can, and often will, get genuinely hurt) and then we see it come to life with potentially bone-crunching results. At its best, it’s a satisfying distillation of slapstick comedy (at one point here, we see one man get taken by surprise by a smack to the face with a massive articulated hand while the rest of the gang a cackle with infectious glee), but in the past, things have often gone a little too far.
The previous instalment ended with a climactic ‘Vomitron’ stunt which saw the cast strapped to a roundabout at top speed and chucking up everywhere, which spurred the two people I was seeing it with to leave the showing early.
This final film breaks from the formula somewhat with a more retrospective approach, looking back on the series and the franchise as a whole as a means of a sendoff. We begin with Self Defense, the first stunt Knoxville ever filmed, in which he wears a bulletproof vest padded with dubious magazines and shoots himself in the chest as the cameramen beg him to reconsider. Given that he went on to found a massively popular stunt franchise, it’s not a spoiler to say that he survives this, and we see him, ecstatic, laughing away on the car ride home after the fact, an effective mission statement for Jackass as a whole.
From there, we’re served a trail mix of old favourites from prior entries complemented by a spattering of new content. The film, as a whole, is something of a Hall of Fame for the series – revisiting stunts like Brad Pitt’s laugh-out-loud funny ‘abduction’ off the streets of LA and Jackass 3D’s ‘Poo Cocktail Supreme’ which sees Steve-O locked into a portaloo and launched into the stratosphere with a whole lot of faeces.
As someone seeing most of these for the very first time, I did find a fair chunk of the film somewhat funny – unsurprising, really, given the ‘greatest hits’ format – but I can’t help but feel as though long-time fans of the franchise will be rather disappointed to see so much of the runtime taken up by reruns of old stunts. Clip shows are an outdated format – the kind of thing you roll your eyes at when you’re binge watching Friends or The Simpsons. In a world where all these stunts are readily available for free on YouTube, I struggle to really base a recommendation for heading to the cinema and forking over your cash off of their inclusion alone.
While each revisitation is preceded by its own interstitial, extremely short interview section where the crew look back at their past exploits with fondness, Jackass: Best and Last really needed to offer some great new content in addition to the old to really justify its existence. I’m not sure that’s the case here. We’re reunited with the old gang – still sporting the new additions from Forever like surfer dude Poopies and the admirably tatted Zach Holmes – and new segments see cast members strapped to shock collars and electric chairs and wearing transparent trousers having just taken laxatives.
The best new contributions take full advantage of our current climate while poking good fun at the original cast’s age. ‘This is what Jackass looks like at fifty’ quips director Jeff Tremaine as Steve-O receives a wince-inducing prostate exam from the film’s newest cast members, the literal robot 1w-Larry.
Elsewhere, there’s a small amount of genuine sadness at the journey coming to a close – Knoxville has a lump in his throat as he’s interviewed on the first day of the shoot – but I feel like this angle really needed to be front and centre to allow the reflective, retrospective format to work.
As it stands, the old’s inclusion feels a little lazy – Knoxville himself admitting that his idea for this fifth film was to stick the old stuff back together, chuck in some new bits and call it a day – but, more importantly, their being here outshines what little new stuff there is. Several of the new sequences feel small-scale, with Zach in particular winding up the butt of the joke (occasionally literally) more times than anyone else, which feels a little like the cast are taking the mick out of his weight.
Worst of all, Rachel Wolfson, who was also introduced in the previous film, has literally nothing to do outside of spinning Twister wheels and holding the blokes’ coats.
It’s a little odd, in retrospect, that this film looks to close the book on Jackass when its predecessor (literally titled Forever) seemed eager to wheel in a new gang of stars to pick up the baton, most of whom are now pushed right to the sidelines. As a sudden wrap-up on the series, this may well feel like more of a holding pattern – one of the series’ .5 staples, which repackaged outtakes from the main entries – rather than a fully-fledged instalment, not least a supposedly show-stopping finale.
I was really hoping for a momentous final stunt to cap off the franchise, but in what is perhaps the most damming criticism I can levy at it, I honestly can’t remember which stunt came last.
BBFC: Rated 18 for dangerous behaviour, strong crude humour, nudity.
Jackass: Best and Last is in cinemas now.
