Once upon a time, there was an aspiring actor calling himself Johnny Knoxville (real name: Philip John Clapp), who decided to shoot himself in the chest with a .38 revolver, armed only with a cheap bulletproof vest and a small stack of pornographic magazines for self-defense. He pitched this important scientific experiment to several publications as a potential story, but only Jeff Tremaine of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother gave it the green light; Tremaine even suggested Knoxville film the stunt for fun and/or legal reasons.
That was 1998. 28 years later, Knoxville is a multimillionaire and starring in a feature-length documentary—his fifth—that begins with a horny robot groping his best friend's anus using only thick peanut butter as lube (Steve-O's only question: "Why thick?"). Paramount Pictures, a Skydance company, is releasing the film on 3,500 screens. How can you not be romantically involved with America?
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It's a rhetorical question, one with an infinite number of correct answers, of course, but watching "Jackass: Best and Last"—the near-conclusion to the iconic Knoxville franchise—reminds you that many wonderful things are possible in this world. A person can swallow a ping-pong ball and spit it out unharmed a few minutes later. The same person can win a game of Twister where the participants have just ingested the ultra-laxative prescribed for a colonoscopy (the playing conditions get much worse, but it's so poetic that I won't spoil it). And, as devoted "Jackass" fans have known since first seeing it on MTV over 25 years ago, an unbreakable friendship can be cemented by kidnapping actor Brad Pitt in full public view while he's waiting in line for a hot dog.
Almost nothing was so stupid and/or self-destructive that the Jackass crew couldn't laugh at it, torment each other, and turn it into joy—an increasingly valuable gift in an age where self-destructive stupidity has become a weapon. against joy at any cost. In this light, it's no wonder that Knoxville and company wanted to keep creating this content forever. Besides, no one on Earth has better and more painfully embodied the principle of "« Find what you love and let it kill you »" and despite the tragic car accident that took the life of Ryan Dunn in 2011, all of these people are somehow still alive.
But time is a tricky thing that comes for everyone, and 2022's "Jackass Forever" forced the gang to confront its own mortality even before Knoxville suffered a brain hemorrhage from a bull attack. Even with the addition of new members, it was clear that Jackass was fundamentally rooted in Knoxville's invaluable friendships with Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and the rest of his merry band of idiots (his friendship with Bam Margera was a prime example), and that the show was meant to die while its members were still alive and kicking each other in the nuts at funerals. So it's best to view "Jackass: Best and Last" as a kind of living wake. A true celebration of life. The coffin is wide open, but the corpse is still happily shitting itself.
Like any decent sentimental funeral, "The Best and the Last" relies heavily on revisiting old memories, which, to put it mildly, means it's essentially a montage of highlights interspersed with new footage. All Jackass films are documentaries in some sense, but this is the only one structured that way, with Knoxville and his co-stars interviewed on camera as they genuflect to the franchise's origins and reveal rare—sometimes previously unseen—footage of their finest moments. What the guys couldn't, or didn't even attempt to, offer in terms of insight or commentary, they make up for with headshakes and laughter; there's something profoundly moving and inspiring about how a group of middle-aged men can look back on the silliest moments of their lives without the slightest hint of regret.
You may have already seen the unaired sequence where Knoxville, disguised as an escaped convict, went into a Los Angeles hardware store to see if anyone could help him cut his handcuffs off with a hacksaw; a low-quality clip of it has been circulating on YouTube for years. Still, it's refreshing that The Best and the Last finally gives the stunt its moment of glory, as Tremaine—who, of course, returned as director—presents this iconic piece of idiocy in a brilliant new context, elevating it from a random piece of internet trash into an important part of American history. The same could be said of "The Poop Cocktail" (in which Steve-O was strapped to a battered portable toilet and thrown 100 feet into the air), or the immortal scene where Knoxville dressed as an old man and stormed into a male strip club with a prosthetic scrotum dangling from his ankles. Devoted fans of "Jackass" have already memorized all of this, but the best obituaries are based on stories that only get better with each passing episode.
Aside from the light magic of interviews, "The Best and the Last" still adheres to the typical Jackass film structure, which is to say, it doesn't really have one. Scenes are presented seemingly at random, with new jokes—easily recognizable by Knoxville's white hair or Sean "Poopis" McInerney's plump lips, even if Steve Pontius, with his penis drooping, looks the same as he did 20 years ago—interspersed with old ones, as if the film were unfolding in the stream-of-consciousness of old friends asking, "Remember when?" while trying to recreate their own heyday.
There are few things in the film that are more jarring than the fact that Knoxville and company have clearly lost their cool. It's a shame Knoxville himself is too injured to engage with the proceedings as much as he once did, and while some of the new moments capture the visionary silliness of the team's best work (Larry the Robot is a brilliant addition to the cast), many of them fall flat. The Jamiroquai-esque opening sequence, usually a gorgeous and expensive spectacle of "I can't believe a Hollywood studio paid for this" silliness, is so bland compared to the Godzilla opening from Jackass Forever that it was painful just to watch—and not in the way I wanted it to be. Knoxville has reached a point in his life where he can't imagine being injured, and that has naturally affected his ability to imagine it.
But the gang is always ready to make the best of any situation (especially Steve-O, who finally fulfilled his dream of being the best Jackass movie hero), and "The Best and the Last" cleverly emphasizes cringe-inducing poop jokes over more destructive stunts. I don't know what the Screen Actors Guild would say about it, but Steve-O's rectum definitely deserves a special mention. And it's not like the film Not tortures its actors to death; there's even a moment near the end where people on set are seriously concerned that McGehee's "Dangerous Eren" might have died from electrocution. Needless to say, it's one of the funniest parts of the film. (Another laugh-out-loud moment? The moment during the end credits when it's revealed there were only two medics on set.)
The crew's tense yet furious reaction to this stunt takes on new poignancy in the context of the bull-riding incident in "Jackass Forever," during which Knoxville nearly died in front of his best friends. Here, we see several alternate shots, including a first take that wasn't up to Knoxville's standards and—seconds after the leader is nearly killed by the bull—a clip in which the always-smiling Pontius cracks a joke in a slightly darker tone than usual. It's important that all of this look good on camera and that the final product be worth all the electrified balls and mangled nipples required to create it. But this wasn't an act. The Jackass gang never did this. for the sake of cameras. This is who they are, and this is how they wanted to live, even if they always felt like they were about to die trying. Yes, their antics were truly damn stupid, but no one who finds such happiness in the world is as stupid as they seem.
Rating: B
Paramount Pictures will release "Jackass: Best and Last" in theaters on Friday, June 26.
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