Jackass: Best and Last Is A Nostalgic Victory Lap

The body is a fascinating object, and the lads of Jackass have spent nearly 30 years pushing it to its limit. If their previous film, Jackass Forever, already felt like a swan song about aging, then the fifth and allegedly final entry Jackass: Best and Last is a victory lap crossed with a retrospective on decades of debauchery. It’s part clip show and part disgusting, hilarious farewell to the prank-and-stunt spectacular, a defiant remnant of the juvenile, “eXtreme” ‘90s that was already passé by the time the franchise began its life on MTV. However, in the age of A.I. and automation, it serves as a raucous reminder of all the things that make us human.

Does that sound ridiculously wistful for a movie filled with this much excrement? Absolutely. But to botch a quote from Brad Pitt — who shows up here in archival footage, by the way — how can you not be romantic about Jackass?

While the film recycles old sketches, it also delivers on the promise of never-before-seen material, like the harebrained, borderline suicidal (more so than usual) segment that was meant to serve as the world’s introduction to ringleader Johnny Knoxville, still going by “P.J.” at the time (his real name is Philip John Clapp). The footage was shot in ‘98 and features Knoxville in Hunter S. Thompson mode, testing out a Kevlar vest re-enforced with a stack of nudie mags in a solo game of Russian roulette. Obviously, things went as planned since Knoxville is still alive, but the anticipation alone is enough to send viewers into cardiac arrest.

You can see why MTV chose not to air something in such poor taste (along with a subsequent prank we’re shown, of Knoxville pretending to be an escaped convict hiding out in a Hollywood hardware store), but the intervening years allow him and director Jeff Tremaine to look back fondly on these poor decisions, like memories shared at a college reunion. This is paired with an elaborate, masochistic intro sequence riffing on the music video for Jamiqoruai’s Virtual Insanity, which Jonathan Glazer directed in 1996 — the same year Knoxville and Tremaine first met and began plotting what would become a worldwide phenomenon.

If Best and Last really is their curtain call, its nostalgic undercurrent is no surprise, but it makes for an especially meaningful contrast with the technological nature of some of their modern segments. Among the new cast members is a robot nicknamed Larry, the kind of sleek humanoid you usually see dancing and faceplanting on YouTube (he gives Steve-O a colonoscopy as the others look on). However, the final Jackass only bears the appearance of automation. Larry is controlled and voiced remotely, and paves the way for some elaborate stunts involving cast members puppeteering one another. In one sketch, oldheads Dave England, Jason “Wee Man” Acuña, and “Danger” Ehren McGhehey are suspended on a stage and have their limbs marionetted while they’re pelted with pineapples. In another, Knoxville’s arms are rigged to those of Sean “Poopies” McInerney via elaborate electrodes that force mirrored movement, resulting in some unfortunate shaving accidents. In the era of A.I., it’s hard not to notice that at every ridiculous turn, human beings are firmly in control.

The old clips run the gamut from fan favorites to gags re-tooled and re-created across the series’ lifespan, but the new ones are just as eye-watering — both because they’re that funny, and because they’re putrid. From botched lip jobs, to diarrhetic Twister, to an outrageous Bad Grandpa sketch set at a strip club, the movie has no dearth of new ideas, though its condensed nature does seem to result in material left on the table. It’s hard not to notice that even among the newcomers, it’s the ones most like the original crew in appearance and demeanor who end up most involved, like the aforementioned Poopies (who has Dave England’s doe eyes) and the rotund Zach Holmes, whose bare buttocks slot in for those of the now elderly, mustachioed Preston Lacy. On the other hand, the crew’s new Black members, rapper Jasper Dolphin and his father Compston “Dark Shark” Wilson feature only minimally, as part of larger groups, while the collective’s first and only woman, Rachel Wolfson, is only tangentially involved, as an onlooker and occasional executioner. The group’s sensibilities have always skewed white and male in their humor and bacchanalia, so to leave off on a note that doesn’t further open these doors is a little disappointing.

However, where Jackass continues to challenge, even if unintentionally, is in its open-hearted embrace of homoeroticism through a lens of a fun, frolic, and full-frontal agony. Cast members get kicked and whacked in the groin, as is tradition, but they never fail to follow it up with half-naked hugs as they all keel over in laughter. In an especially touching celebration, Knoxville pounces on a completely naked Chris Pontius after he executes an Olympic high jump in the vein of an athlete from ancient Greece; the fellas’ actions may be moronic, but they’re not uneducated about the long history of using bodies as entertainment. As always, a number of their stunts feel derived from the days of vaudeville and Buster Keaton (with some classic Simpsons thrown in for good measure). At a time when the average studio film trades in empty gestures to old properties, the Jackass boys are practically enlightened in their use of cultural reference to draw laughter.

Of course, there’s no getting around the fact that Jackass has its own stature in the zeitgeist too, and its own mythology in a way, from the tragic passing of Ryan Dunn — whose archival appearance here feels practically angelic — to their falling out with longtime friend and cast member Brandon “Bam” Margera. Their respective appearances are tinged with bittersweetness, to say nothing of the bullfighting stunt that nearly ended Knoxville’s life and career. But to shy away from these things would be to ignore the broad spectrum of experience that Jackass tends to capture between its heightened crescendos of pranks going right (and oh so wrong). At this stage, nearly three decades on, its B-footage documentary style has now yielded good natured in-jokes of its own, like cameraman Lance Bangs being unable to stomach segments involving bodily fluids.

While Jackass: Best and Last stops short of being a complete Jackass film (the cast may genuinely be too old and broken for an entire feature), its 92-minute runtime is chock-a-block with wheeze-and-wince inducing hilarity, and a fair few moments sure to get long-time viewers at least slightly emotional. Few modern entertainers have put their bodies on the line the way Knoxville, Steve-O, Pontius, Wee Man, Preston, Dave and Danger so readily have, so when they take their final bow from a safe distance from the ongoing explosive mayhem, it feels like a genuine adieu in a way that few modern sequels do. You can bring back invulnerable costumed superheroes in infinite permutations, but these handful of ordinary, fallible idiots are one of a kind.

Jackass: Best and Last is playing in theaters now.