‘Jackass: Best and Last’ Review: Johnny Knoxville Says Goodbye to ‘Jackass’ with a Poignantly Disgusting Look Back at Its Greatest Hits

Once upon a time, an aspiring actor who self-identified as Johnny Knoxville — birth name Philip John Clapp — decided to shoot himself in the chest with a .38-caliber revolver with nothing besides a cheap bulletproof vest and a short stack of porno magazines for protection. He pitched that vital scientific experiment to several publications as a potential story, but only Jeff Tremaine of the skateboarding rag “Big Brother” gave it the green light; Tremaine even suggested that Knoxville film the stunt for entertainment value and/or legal reasons.

That was in 1998. 28 years later, Knoxville is now a millionaire several times over and starring in a feature-length documentary — his fifth — that starts with a horny robot fingering his best friend’s butthole with nothing but chunky peanut butter for lubricant (Steve-O’s only question: “Why chunky?”). Paramount Pictures, a Skydance Company, is releasing the film on 3,500 screens. How can you not be romantic about America?

That’s a rhetorical question with an infinite number of right answers, of course, but to watch “Jackass: Best and Last” — all but definitively the final installment in Knoxville’s long-running signature franchise — is to remember that all manner of beautiful things are possible in this world. A man can swallow a ping pong ball and shit it out perfectly intact just a few minutes later. That same man can win a game of Twister whose participants have just chugged the ultra-laxative they prescribe you in advance of a colonoscopy (the playing conditions get so much worse, but in ways that are too poetic to spoil). And, as devoted fans of the “Jackass” troupe have known since they first saw it happen on MTV more than 25 years ago, unbreakable friendships can be strengthened by kidnapping the actor Brad Pitt in full view of the public while he waits in line to buy a hot dog. 

Almost nothing has been too stupid and/or self-destructive for the “Jackass” crew to laugh at, torture each other with, and transmute into joy — an increasingly valuable gift during a span of time in this country when self-destructive stupidity has been weaponized against joy at all costs. In that light, it’s no wonder that Knoxville and co. wanted to keep making this stuff forever. Besides, no one on Earth has better or more painfully embodied a find what you love and let it kill you ethos, and notwithstanding the tragic car accident that claimed Ryan Dunn in 2011, all of these people are somehow still alive. 

But time is a goon that comes for everyone, and 2022’s “Jackass Forever” forced the gang to confront their own mortality even before Knoxville suffered a brain hemorrhage when he was gored by a bull. Even with some new blood in the mix, it was clear that “Jackass” was fundamentally rooted in the irreplaceable friendship that Knoxville shares with Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and the rest of his merry band of knuckleheads (Bam Margera’s served as a glaring tell), and that it would have to die while its cast was still alive to hit each other in the balls during its funeral. To that end, it’s best to think of “Jackass: Best and Last” as a living wake of sorts. A true celebration of life. The casket is wide open, but the corpse is still happily shitting its pants.

Like any burial service worth its sentiment, “Best and Last” is largely rooted in revisiting old memories, which is a generous way of saying that it’s basically a glorified clip show with a smattering of new footage sprinkled in for good measure. All the “Jackass” movies are documentaries in a sense, but this is the only entry structured like one, complete with Knoxville and his accomplices being interviewed on camera as they genuflect before the origins of the franchise and tee up rare — sometimes previously unseen — footage of their greatest hits. What the boys fail, or don’t even try, to provide in insight or commentary, they make up for by shaking their heads and laughing at each other; there’s something extremely poignant and inspiring about a bunch of middle-aged men who can look back at the dumbest moments of their lives without the slightest hint of regret.

It’s possible you’ve already watched the unaired incident where Knoxville dressed up as an escaped convict and walked into an L.A. hardware store to see if anyone would help cut his handcuffs off with a hacksaw; a low-res clip of the bit has been floating around YouTube for years. Still, it’s satisfying that “Best and Last” finally allows the stunt to have its day in the sun, as Tremaine — returning as the film’s director, of course — presents that formative piece of idiocy in a glorious new context, transforming it from an errant piece of web detritus and into a vital piece of American history. The same could be said of the “Poo Poo Cocktail” (for which Steve-O was strapped inside a well-used porta-potty and slingshotted 100 feet into the air), or the immortal bit where Knoxville dressed up in old man drag and crashed a male strip club, complete with a prosthetic scrotum dangling around his ankles. “Jackass” diehards have already committed this stuff to memory, but the best eulogies hinge on the kinds of stories that only get better every time you hear them.

Aside from that light fairy-dusting of interview footage, “Best and Last” still adheres to the typical structure of a “Jackass” movie, which is to say that it doesn’t really have one. Bits are presented as if at random, with new gags — easily identified by the whiteness of Knoxville’s hair or the plumpness of Sean “Poopies” McInerney’s acid-filled lips, even if floppy-dicked Pontius looks the same as he did 20 years ago — interspersed among the old, as if the movie were unfolding with the stream-of-consciousness of some old friends saying “remember when?” even while they try to recreate their glory days. 

Little in the film stings as much as the fact that Knoxville and co. have clearly lost a step. It’s a bummer that Knoxville himself is too banged up to get involved to the same degree that he once did, and though some of the new bits reflect the visionary idiocy of the crew’s finest work (Larry the robot is a brilliant addition to the cast), many of them fail to leave a mark. The Jamiroquai-inspired opening sequence, usually a glorious and expensive spectacle of “I can’t believe a Hollywood studio paid for this” stupidity, is so limp compared to the “Godzilla” intro from “Jackass Forever” that it hurt me just to watch — and not in the way I wanted it to. Knoxville has reached a point in life where he can’t imagine getting hurt, and that has naturally affected his ability to imagine getting hurt. 

But the gang is always ready to make the best of a bad situation (especially Steve-O, who finally fulfills his dream of being the MVP of a “Jackass” movie), and “Best and Last” smartly emphasizes wretch-inducing poop gags in lieu of more destructive stunts. I’m not sure what SAG would have to say about this, but Steve-O’s rectum absolutely deserves its own billing. And it’s not like the movie doesn’t torture its cast within an inch of their lives; there’s even a moment toward the end where people on set are genuinely concerned that “Danger Ehren” McGhehey might have been electrocuted to death. It goes without saying that it’s one of the funniest parts of the film. (Another laugh-out-loud moment? The bit in the end credits when it’s revealed they only had two medics on set.)

The crew’s urgent but howling reaction to that stunt assumes a new poignancy in the context of the bull incident from “Jackass Forever,” during which Knoxville was nearly killed in front of his best friends. We see some alternate footage from it here, including a first take that wasn’t up to Knoxville’s standards, and — in the seconds after the ringleader was gored within an inch of his life — a clip in which the ever-smiling Pontius cracks a joke in a slightly more somber tone than usual. It matters that this stuff looks good on camera and that the final product is worth all the electrified testicles and disfigured nipples required to make it. But it wasn’t an act. The “Jackass” gang was never doing it for the cameras. This is who they are, and it’s how they wanted to live, even if it always felt like they were about to die trying. Yes, their shenanigans were really, really fucking stupid, but no one who finds this kind of happiness in the world is ever as dumb as they look.  

Grade: B

Paramount Pictures will release “Jackass: Best and Last” in theaters on Friday, June 26.

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