Jackass: Best and Last

Grade: C

Father Time is undefeated. So many cherished traditions we’ve counted on will one day, one way or another, end. Everybody ages at the same rate; it’s one of the few things we all have in common. I like catching up with people over the course of a lifetime, and seeing how the wisdom they’ve gained over their years has shaped them. The pounds, wrinkles, and grey hair have always been a poignant and endearing reminder for me that life marches on for all of us. 

Jackass began as a show on MTV in the early 2000s, which ran for just three short seasons, but made careers for the cast members. I never watched it, or any of the heaping handful of movies. What drew me to Jackass: Best and Last was seeing the cast in the trailer, a generation older from when they started, now at the end of this road looking back. Johnny Knoxville is now 55 years old and a silver fox. There’s a sweetness in how he literally can’t mention that this is the last Jackass movie without getting that emotional quiver in his voice. He starts to cry every time he brings it up.

If you didn’t know, the franchise consists of clips of these people performing stunts. Some are creative. Some are elaborate. All of them are stupid. Each one ends with a hard, definitive fade to black, which can be annoying as some last less than a minute. It reminds me of the choice to end every song on Billy Joel’s Live at Yankee Stadium album with a fade-out. It’s helpful if you’re listening to it on shuffle with other songs in your library, but irritating if you’re playing the album from start to finish.

“If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you” is a phrase that was commonly used as a promotional tagline for TV rerun blocks. I hear that Jackass: Best and Last is 60% new stuff, 30% previously seen footage, and 10% old-but-unseen stunts. It was all new to me. My favorite sequences were the pranks. There are no gross-out moments, and the worst thing that happens to anyone is they might be embarrassed for a few minutes. There’s an early one that MTV refused to air, that has Knoxville dressed in a prison inmate’s jumpsuit, handcuffed, entering a hardware store in search of a hacksaw. A bit from the series finale is repeated here, where the crew kidnaps Brad Pitt while he’s out in public and throws him in a van. Nobody got hurt, and Pitt was in on it. They just wanted to momentarily freak some people out.

I truly didn’t care for the bulk of the material, for which the series is known. Much of it involves feces, and men getting hit in their most sensitive area. In one scene, they all quickly down their own individual container of colonoscopy prep juice, and then play Twister. We see nature take its course all over the mat and floor, as these pantsless men contort in all kinds of positions. “Left foot red is about to become left foot brown,” Knoxville quips. He was told by doctors that he can’t afford another concussion, so he doesn’t participate in the most intense skits. He mainly hangs back to host and observe.

The ending is ostentatiously theatrical, dramatic, and sentimental. It includes no less than three classic farewell songs (I wonder how Frank Sinatra would feel about one of his anthems being used as part of a Jackass send-off), and the long, deliberate goodbye extends to the bitter end of the credits. However, I was taken in by it. If we can mentally separate from the jackassery of the stunts we see frenetically paraded on in the final montage, there’s an abundance of smiles, hugs, and camaraderie. This is the end of a tradition that has lasted more than half their lives. I can forgive them for going a little overboard with their finale. The guys who have been there from the beginning have earned the right to mark that time.

I came out of Jackass: Best and Last feeling a strange dichotomy. Did I enjoy the movie that was presented? No. But it brought about a bizarre affection for the bond that was obviously formed over the last 26 years. Before I started writing this, I spent about an hour reading up on the people and the history of the show. I’d be ok with never seeing another Jackass movie, or the show – but I’d see a documentary. I’d read a book about it. I’d watch interviews. I walked out of Jackass: Best and Last disliking the film itself, but coming away with a curious newfound respect for the creators and the lore.

Grade: C