There was a time when Jackass was dangerous. In February 2001, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut sent a letter to MTV urging the network to cancel the show, which he called “exploitative and degrading.” Lieberman’s outrage was fueled by an incident where a 13-year-old boy had been hospitalized in critical condition after attempting to re-create a stunt he saw on the show. Called “Human Barbecue,” the bit saw Jackass host Johnny Knoxville cover himself in steaks and lay over an open flame as his buddies doused him with gasoline and marinade. The key difference? Knoxville wore a flame-retardant suit, and the kid didn’t.
A classic sketch that reappears in Jackass: Best and Last.
In retrospect, yeah, that was a dumb thing to do — that kid, now 38, would probably agree — and exactly the kind of thing the warnings at the beginning and end of every Jackass episode (and movie) tell you not to do. But in 2001, Jackass was an easy target in an anxious cultural moment where the gross-out antics of early reality TV (this was also the age of Fear Factor, remember) prompted intense pearl-clutching from the establishment. The proud stupidity and frat-boy extremity of Jackass stunts made the show’s stars easy targets, stand-ins for the dumbing down of America with spiky hair and ringer tees.
So how did they become so wholesome?
Twenty-five years after Knoxville quit and MTV canceled the original series, Jackass: Best and Last is a sentimental send-off for what has become an extended family of foolhardy risk-takers. Part greatest-hits compilation and part parody of the foibles of middle age, the movie features multiple bits inspired by the colonoscopies that Johnny, Steve-O, Pontius, Wee Man, Dave, Preston, and Danger Ehren (RIP Ryan Dunn) have had to undergo now that they’re in their fifties. The earnestness of Knoxville’s urging for men over 50 to get their colons checked is endearing: Getting hit in the balls is funny, but dying of cancer is not. Besides, since when have the Jackass boys been worried about putting stuff up their butts?
The marketing for Jackass: Best and Last has emphasized the crew’s love for the LGBTQIA+ community, even building a float and marching in the West Hollywood Pride Parade as a show of support. The crew had previously been banned from filming in the L.A. sub-city — not for anything homophobic, but for a 1999 prank where Knoxville donned an orange prison jumpsuit and walked into a hardware store inquiring about hacksaws. (It’s featured in the latest film.)
Many observers have noted the queer undertones of the show’s pervasive junk-grabbing and anal humor —if you like, you can go read an academic paper about it called “Ambivalent Anality: Revisiting the Queer Ecologic of the ‘Jackass Moment.’” And the show’s game of homoerotic chicken does undoubtedly play differently in an era where “that’s gay” is no longer a common expression of contempt among high schoolers. (Shoutout to Hilary Duff.) In the 2020s, however, ‘00s-style edgelord bigotry has unfortunately made a comeback, especially among young men — which makes Knoxville and company’s radical openness and unironic embrace of their queer fandom all the more encouraging.
Knoxville even wears a John Waters T-shirt in a few crucial scenes in Best and Last; it’s a nod to his decades-long friendship with the Pink Flamingos director, who’s also become a cultural icon almost in spite of himself.
Do teenage boys still watch Jackass? The crowd at Inverse’s press screening for Jackass: Best and Last seemed to indicate that they do, or are at least open to seeing the movie with male relatives who also happen to be film critics. And that’s a good thing. For millennials, aging alongside the boys (and Rachel, who is sadly underutilized in this latest film) is nostalgic. But for younger viewers, simply seeing what’s essentially a friend group (albeit one brought together under boy band-type circumstances) sticking together for multiple decades, supporting each other and helping each other build lives and families off of some self-destructive pranks they did as teenagers, is inspiring. Maybe even heartwarming.
Like any family, they’re not perfect. There have been rough patches, including the substance issues that led to founding member Bam Margera’s absence from the last couple of Jackass movies. (He does appear in archival footage in the new movie.) But even here, they’re trying: In 2025, Knoxville told Rolling Stone in an interview that “I heard [Margera is] doing a lot better, and that makes me happy ... I love him and I hope he’s doing well.” Margera’s parents were also invited to the premiere of Best and Last, an experience that was apparently an emotional one for all involved.
I’m not crying. Johnny Knoxville is crying.
And okay, maybe they’re just decent by comparison to the “manosphere” influencers of today, whose personas are built on toxic narcissism. But given that they’re a bunch of Gen-X skater boys obsessed with poo humor, aging relatively unproblematically, as the original Jackass cast has, was far from guaranteed. That points to another secret to Jackass’ longevity and continued relevance: Their jokes were never at the expense of anyone but each other — and maybe some guys playing golf, but whatever. By making themselves the butt of the joke, they made sure that the joke stayed funny.
The version of masculinity embodied in Jackass is not about dominance and exploitation. It’s about loyalty and resilience and making an ass of yourself to make your buddies laugh. It’s a masculinity that’s durable enough to change and to admit to its shortcomings, to take the advice of doctors (Knoxville’s told him he simply cannot sustain any more head injuries, a big reason why the franchise is winding down) and maybe even get a little misty while reminiscing with the bros. What is that, if not wholesome?
