"Jackass: Best and Last:" Saying Goodbye to Hollywood’s Best “Professionals”

[the following review is spoiler-free]

When promotion began for Jackass: Best and Last, it led with an angle of sentimentality. Johnny Knoxville and co. were misty-eyed in their interviews, reflecting on the fun times of yore and preparing for one final goodbye. Best and Last was positioned not as the crazy one, the big one, or the funny one, but the sweet one. However – and any real Jackass fan can tell you this – sentimentality was never a weak point of any one of their films. In fact, a tender fraternal bond has always been the backbone of the series, going all the way back to Jackass: The Movie in 2002. In that way, Best and Last is no cheap tearjerker that leans on nostalgia, it’s a continuation of what these guys do best and a natural, celebratory conclusion of a truly unparalleled touchstone of American culture.

The label of a new Jackass movie comes with a lot of baggage. This is a series predicated on wild stunts that push the boundary of taste and safety to the outer limits. With each installment, the Jackass crew has dutifully understood the expectations and surpassed them each time. Look no further than the jump between Jackass: The Movie’s understated ending on the water and the no-holds barred Busby Berkely/Buster Keaton musical extravaganza that closes out Jackass Two. Exponential growth is the lifeblood of Jackass, and Best and Last might be the first installment to regress instead of push the boundary. The stunts are there, some of them certainly living up to the expectation of “the last Jackass”, but Best and Last sticks to its guns instead aiming for the stars. 

That doesn’t make for a disappointing experience at all, but one that does justice to the spirit of Jackass and retains its quality as it goes out. The simplicity of many of the new bits are as sharp as Jackass has ever been. Never during my screening did I find myself let down by scale, because while upping the ante is fun, that’s not what Jackass is about. Expensive robots performing medical procedures is cool, but Chris Pontius doing high jump in the nude “as an homage to the first Olympics” is exactly the juvenile magic that keeps Jackass so fun. Jackass Forever scratched the itch for wildness, but the relaxed pace of Best and Last acts as a more satisfying conclusion.

The limited number of new stunts opens the door for Best and Last’s other selling feature, that being a retrospective on the entire Jackass series with clips, cast reflections, and never before seen stunts. This “Best” section of the film is sure to be the most polarizing as there are few things on TV that audiences loathe as much as a clip show. It’s easy to be cynical about the clips of Best and Last, especially when some of the clips come from the movie they released a mere 4 years ago. That being said, the clips don’t function as much as a crutch here for two reasons. One being the fact that these men are in their mid-to-late 50s and a full film of pure Jackassery could be lethal. The other being the intensely personal, do-it-yourself (or rather, per the disclaimer, don’t do it at all) filmmaking mode the Jackass crew has always worked in opens the door for this sort of digital scrapbook in a way that’s fun and authentic.

Like Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

, Best and Last opens with original footage that kicked off the series over 25 years ago. A crudely shot home video of Johnny Knoxville attempting to stop a bullet point plank with a kevlar vest and a stack of dirty magazines, much to the concern of his crew. It’s a nice moment of reflection, giving the new generation of fans a glimpse into the wild and frankly, deadly, early days of Jackass. But just like Nirvanna, the clip doesn’t exist out of context, it inspires a dialogue between time that continues throughout the whole film.

You could mumble about the juxtaposition between old and new Jackass, and that would be fair. There’s quite a novelty in watching these guys grow up and evolve from blowing up porta-potty’s to blowing up porta-potty’s with a budget of 10 million dollars. But it’s not really about the differences between now and then, it’s about what remains. Jackass is one of the few productions of the digital age that truly understood the potential of the medium just as it started. The freedom of creation that comes with a handheld camera and crude editing tricks was the key to both the underdog charm of early Jackass and its immediate cultural explosion. All these years later, with digital content and independent productions so prevalent and integral to the media landscape, it’s easy to appreciate how trailblazing and essential the early experimentation of Jackass was. That same novelty remains in Best and Last, a film that also understands the potential for personal stories on digital. 

Jackass has always belonged to the Jackass crew, and in that way the sifting through their library doesn’t feel like a studio mandated “Best Of” compilation, it feels like a fitting coda straight from the creators. These aren’t just the best bits, these are the favourites. A digital photo album of family and friends over the span of 25 years drawn up by the same faces and names. As studios mercilessly regurgitate popular IP and AI threatens to parade around the likenesses of deceased actors and actresses like zombies, a film so in control of its own legacy and reception is more than entertaining, it’s vital. There’s a deep intent to the selection of repurposed footage, all of it functioning as a piece of the final bow for Jackass.

While there’s a lot of sweetness abound as the boys gather together for one final go, Best and Last is not without its bitterness too. It’s hard to have to stop doing what you love, even more so when it's probably something you shouldn’t have ever started in the first place in the name of health and safety, and the Jackass boys are very open with how much they’re going to miss their jobs. While there’s no long monologue where they lament age and show off their scars, Best and Last is littered with moments that leave a poignant sting. Whether it be Knoxville getting choked up on the electric chair, Steve-O’s reflection on the MVP’s of previous films, and especially Preston Lacey’s credit confession of “I feel old and I miss Dunn”, it’s made very clear that this is not an easy goodbye. But the memento mori is never a drag, these guys are having too much fun with one another. Just as we’ve watched them grow up through pranks and groin injuries, so too will we watch them grapple with mortality in the same way. 

There are a lot of ways to interpret this eulogy – a digital memorial, a passing of the torch, a funeral for a long gone type of content – but (and I think the Jackass crew would agree with me), it’s still a damn funny movie in a series of damn funny movies. This is a victory lap from masters of the comedic craft, and it’s a total treat as a fan. The twister game, the colonoscopy, the trivia game, so many of the new stunts are instant Jackass legends. Not to mention revisiting the classics on the big screen. There’s also an electric chemistry between these guys who’ve been taking hits from each other for a quarter of a century now. Each one knows exactly how to push the buttons of the other and they pull no punches for the last ride. The new cast members introduced in Forever – while not given too much to do – still add a wonderful flavor of delinquency to the events onscreen. With Jackass humour, you’re either on board or you’re as far away as possible, and with Best and Last, it’s never been a better time to be on board.

In Jackass: Best and Last, the last American daredevils give us a fitting goodbye. They show their age, but they show their resolve too, not letting a couple broken ribs, missing testicles, and head trauma get in the way of doing it all again. There’s something intensely moving about the way the boys expose their scars. It takes a hell of a family to push you into risking your life in the first place, let alone consistently over 25 years, but that’s what it’s about at the end of the day, the scars that they share. Some are inflicted by each other, and some run a little deeper, but regardless of their shape and size, the Jackass crew is there to hug it out after. It’s sad to grow old and watch these guys realize they’re not, in fact, immortal, but it’s nice to have a movie that can celebrate the fact that for over 25 years, they were.