{"id":660391,"date":"2026-06-27T02:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660391\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T02:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:21:14","slug":"jackass-best-and-last-review-the-old-men-and-a-sea-of-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660391\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Jackass: Best and Last’ review: The old men and a sea of pain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The best weapon in the \u201cJackass\u2019\u201d arsenal isn\u2019t the taser, the beehive or the booby-trapped latrine. It\u2019s the explosion of relief when a prank ends, often in humiliation, always with hoots and claps. The first film, 2002\u2019s \u201cJackass: The Movie\u201d<\/a> was slow to discover that carnage without camaraderie is painful; several injuries limped off-screen in horrified silence. Laughter heals, except for the brain hemorrhage that Johnny Knoxville<\/a> suffered in 2022\u2019s \u201cJackass Forever\u201d<\/a> when, dissatisfied by the clobbering he took from a bull, requested a second ramming that knocked him out cold.<\/p>\n

Hence \u201cJackass: Best and Last,\u201d the goon squad\u2019s alleged final film, is underwhelmingly tame. Shot quickly by stalwart director Jeff Tremaine<\/a> this spring, half of it is a clip reel of past hits, like the time fan favorite Steve-O<\/a> slingshotted into the sky in a port-a-potty. The rest is scraps of hastily assembled chaos, the most elaborate of which is a puppet show in which veterans Ehren McGhehey, Dave England and Jason \u201cWee Man\u201d Acu\u00f1a dangle helplessly from strings, trying to recite cue cards while being pummeled by tropical fruit. \u201cA pineapple!\u201d Wee Man moans.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no sadist. They\u2019ve suffered plenty for our amusement. Still, it\u2019s a shame that for the first time in two and a half decades of cringe comedy, the guffaws feel forced.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the Jackasses\u2019 age, if not maturity, are a couple skits about prostate and rectal checkups. (The gnarliest involves clear pants, colonoscopy prep liquid and a game of Twister.) Modern technology enters the arena with a nimble-fingered robot. If the team had invested any actual energy into brainstorming this entry, they\u2019d have played paintball with a sniper drone. At least for the sake of torch-passing, someone should have thought of something for the newish members introduced in \u201cJackass Forever\u201d to do besides stand around and applaud.<\/p>\n

These fresher faces \u2014 Jasper Dolphin, Rachel Wolfson, Zach Holmes \u2014 prove brave and resilient when allowed to participate. Only one of them, Sean \u201cPoopies\u201d McInerney, a surf bro so gullible that I\u2019m not sure he\u2019s capable of informed legal consent, fits into \u201cBest and Last\u201d like a well-worn punching bag. (When Poopies yelps that \u201cmy mind is getting to me\u201d while wearing a shock collar around a sensitive area, people snort because, as sweet as he seems, the only thing rattling inside his cranium is a moth.) Early on, Poopies gets swollen lip injections that, someone claims, will last the whole movie. You expect his trophy wife pout to be a running sight gag. But his disfigurement never even gets another closeup.<\/p>\n

\u201cJackass\u201d started with a bang. In January of 1998, Knoxville, then a 26-year-old aspiring actor, strapped on a cheap bulletproof vest padded with a stack of \u201cHustler\u201d magazines and fired a gun point-blank into his chest. His dumb derring-do went viral on VHS tapes, earning him an MTV show and five feature films. Watching that Rosetta Stone-cold stupid footage here, you\u2019re struck not only by his audacity, but by the scene\u2019s excruciating comic pacing. As there\u2019s only one bullet in the pistol, empty chambers click multiple times before the bullet finally fires. Logically, you know Knoxville will live long enough for his hair to turn fright-wig white. Yet the lizard brain making you gawk is shrieking.<\/p>\n

Do not attempt any of the stunts you\u2019re about to see, the prefatory caution blares. Absolutely. The thing is, no one else could. \u201cBest and Last\u2019s\u201d flashbacks are a walloping reminder that Knoxville is inimitable: a telegenic and extroverted entertainer with a charisma he wields like a skunk aims its stink. Upset him at your own risk. Like Buster Keaton<\/a> before him, Knoxville has an uncanny awareness of how his death-defying escapades appear on camera. Even in that near-suicidal early segment, note how Knoxville stays on his feet, enduring agony with a magician\u2019s \u201cTa-da!\u201d He might have given himself a bruise the size of a baseball but he\u2019s focused on the audience\u2019s delight.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the visuals dramatically improve, from snuff film aesthetics to confidently silly splendor. \u201cJackass Number Two,\u201d released in 2006, expended major energy on a musical homage to Old Hollywood that nodded to Keaton and bathing beauty Esther Williams<\/a> who, in MGM\u2019s \u201cMillion Dollar Mermaid,\u201d plunged 50 feet into a pool and broke her neck. By 2010\u2019s \u201cJackass 3D,\u201d<\/a> which riffed on classic cartoons with Knoxville strapping himself onto an Acme-style red rocket, one could admit they went to see a Jackass movie for the cinematography with even more sincerity than if Knoxville claimed he bought \u201cHustler\u201d for its life-saving properties.<\/p>\n

The new movie doesn\u2019t have any artistic ambition. The charitable excuse for its reliance on old material is that the gang wanted one more film that summed up their entire legacy \u2014 from the impact of seeing them age to the opportunity to include departed colleagues Ryan Dunn<\/a>, who died in 2011, and Bam Margera<\/a>, fired in 2020. The other explanation is it\u2019s a cash grab made for pennies. Still, Steve-O strives for memorable moments, gathering the gang in a generic office building corridor to watch him take off his pants and pop out a ping-pong ball. There\u2019s a lot of nudity but the setting feels half-assed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest and Last\u2019s\u201d intro splat-tacular, typically a highlight of each film, hinges on the posse standing still on a moving floor. But the monochrome staging \u2014 white walls, white ground \u2014 looks almost like CGI, the antithesis of their appeal, and it takes us a minute to understand what\u2019s actually going on. Worst, it lacks both suspense and surprise, that no-they-aren\u2019t-oh-god-they-are drama that once elevated the franchise to the peak of pure cinema.<\/p>\n

There is \u2014 and I mean this \u2014 existentialism in witnessing a person embrace shame and terror. Actors have won Oscars without achieving the transcendence of, say, misery glutton McGhehey in \u201cJackass Forever,\u201d bound to a chair and coated in salmon and honey, realizing that his friends have released a bear into the room. Meryl Streep could never do that (and wouldn\u2019t have to). McGhehey\u2019s sole path to stardom is that he did.<\/p>\n

Not everything in a \u201cJackass\u201d movie needs to be that sublime. One of my few genuine howls in \u201cBest and Last\u201d came in a three-second rehash of someone stepping on a rake; another was the percussion Chris Pontius makes with his swinging nethers before attempting a naked Fosbury flop. There\u2019s a great accidental gag in a cut bit from the original MTV pilot when a deputy pulls up to arrest Knoxville and forgets to put her car in park. Yet the snippet I keep thinking about is a throwaway beat in a new skit when McGhehey willingly gets into the wrong chair again and, once freed, attacks Knoxville who coolly knees him in the nuts. Everyone chuckles.<\/p>\n

Once, in anthropology class, my professor lectured on an insular island tribe that cackled whenever someone got hurt. Schadenfreude was the community\u2019s way to vent tension. I thought of that village throughout \u201cBest and Last,\u201d especially during Knoxville\u2019s nonchalant disarmament of his pal. Team Jackass has stayed united even while at each other\u2019s throats. In bad times, they\u2019ve borne each other\u2019s struggles with sobriety and mental health. In good, they\u2019ve seen the inequality of success that\u2019s left Knoxville in a better financial position to retire than the rest.<\/p>\n

While \u201cBest and Last\u201d is a whiff, I can forgive this band of bozos\u2019 urge to make it. No one seems happy to still be zapping themselves with electrodes. They just want to rally together for the final time to choke out one last laugh.<\/p>\n

‘Jackass: Best and Last’<\/p>\n

Rated: R, for extremely dangerous stunts and crude material throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language and sexual material<\/p>\n

Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: Opening Friday, June 26 in wide release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best weapon in the \u201cJackass\u2019\u201d arsenal isn\u2019t the taser, the beehive or the booby-trapped latrine. It\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2754,1774,13451,96,193607,29941,221471,13901,13902,127618,42628,221472,29516,2839,221469,72906,56,54,55,221470],"class_list":["post-660391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-actor","tag-age","tag-best","tag-entertainment","tag-feature-film","tag-half","tag-hustler","tag-jackass","tag-jackass-forever","tag-johnny-knoxville","tag-last","tag-mcghehey","tag-movie","tag-movies","tag-poopies","tag-shame","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wee-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}