Jackass: Best and Last

First aired on MTV in 2000, Jackass has become far more than the sum of its exposed, flayed and electrocuted parts. A trolley load of stuntmen, risking death to the delight of their dumb friends, hit notes of primal glee and homoerotic camaraderie, in among the gross-out moments (poo cocktail, anyone?). In this final film, there are extra ingredients. Chiefly, the acknowledgement of ageing and a strangely profound group acceptance that soon Johnny Knoxville will have to stop presenting himself for concussions from furious bulls.

Now all in their fifties, with original cast members Knoxville, Steve-O, Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuña, Chris Pontius et al, supplemented by new recruits picked up over various movie sequels, Jackass: Best and Last has a melancholic awareness of its own mortality. Really. 

New stunts are spliced with favourite skits from previous films, as well as unaired segments that were too edgy for broadcast at the time. Their bodies have been through so much trauma by this point, not least the tragic death in a car crash of OG cast member Ryan Dunn, and references to prostate exams are woven in among the abundant penis trials.

Within this existential framing, footage from the early noughties, when the Tennessean Knoxville was the Southern belle of the balls and they all resembled scrappy skate kids, feels poignant as hell. 

‘Warning: do not attempt this. It’s extra stupid and could kill you’ is the onscreen advice accompanying a stunt of mythological significance to fans. Knoxville in his early twenties, still going by his birth name PJ Clapp, dons a bulletproof vest (stuffed with a couple of extra lads’ mags) and shoots himself in the chest with a .38 calibre revolver. The joy of Jackass is that there is no psychoanalytic component. A mad suicidal act that could power a three-act opera is here presented as a particular kind of human foible. And onto the next…

This film has heart – and balls

The body as a source of endurance and spectacle is, as ever, a motif, and we are given more than a pound of flesh. Younger Jackass-er Zach Holmes gamely accepts cast members reaching around near or in his butthole. As Pontius limbers up for a nude Fosbury flop, the sound of his dick slapping from side to side rings out. A bystander murmurs, ‘This is too much.’

New stunts call back to older stunts and there is a self-referential element to the chit-chat, too. Pontius concedes that he loves to perform in his birthday suit. Steve-O cedes that he’s never been in the most iconic stunt and this is his last chance. With a lump in his throat, Knoxville admits that each film has supposedly been the last film, ‘but this is’.

Montages set to ‘Holding out for a Hero’ by Bonnie Tyler and ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra bookend the whole bonanza. You’ve gotta have balls and heart for these torch songs to land. Jackass: Best and Last has both – and isn’t afraid to show how they hurt. 

In cinemas worldwide Fri Jun 26.