Follows the Jackass crew as they pull off their final series of dangerous stunts and pranks, marking the franchise’s end.
The JACKASS movies are an acquired taste. If you enjoy watching Johnny Knoxville and his crew take on stunts such as the Poo Cocktail Supreme, the Lamborghini Tooth Pull, the Butt X-Ray, and the Toro Totter, these films are for you. Over the years, I have often wondered why grown men would willingly subject themselves to such humiliation and pain. Some have suffered severe, potentially life-threatening injuries, including brain hemorrhages, concussions, a torn urethra, third-degree burns, skull and facial fractures, and serious testicular and back trauma. Eventually, I arrived at the simplest explanation: they are all completely insane.
Granted, in my teenage years living in Dublin, Ireland, I would hang off the side of speeding trains at 70mph, shimmying along the handrails, pretending I was Indiana Jones or James Bond, crawl underneath trucks, and allow myself to be dragged from the back of cars on hard sand at the local beach. Perhaps I was a little reckless, but I was also a teenager. Some of the stunts in JACKASS looked like fun, but most were huge no-nos.
With each passing film, I wondered how long Knoxville and his crew could keep putting themselves through that kind of punishment. But in “Jackass: Best and Last,” Knoxville even admits at one point that they are getting too old and it is time to move on. I can imagine the series being resurrected with a new crop of young, crazy wannabes, but for now, fans will have to revisit the films and the original television series.
“Jackass: Best and Last” mixes new stunts, never-before-seen footage, and a retrospective clip show of classic moments from the franchise’s history. Most of the new stunts are pretty tame compared to previous iterations, but some previously unaired scenes serve as a vivid reminder of just how dangerous and absurd the crew’s antics could be.
Some of the new skits include Steve-O getting a painful prostate exam from a robot named Larry, Poopies getting his penis shocked by a shock collar while attempting to walk across a balance beam, and Wee Man, Dave England, Danger Ehren, and Dark Shark trying to escape an “escape room from hell.”
We also see some old footage of Knoxville’s very first stunt filmed before JACKASS, in which he wears a cheap bulletproof vest and shoots himself in the chest with a .38-caliber gun. One of the show’s classic segments includes Brad Pitt getting abducted while standing at Pink’s Hot Dogs in Los Angeles, the late Ryan Dunn putting a toy car up his ass and then asking a local doctor for an X-ray, the massive giant hand and flour trap from “Jackass 3D,” and the infamous porta-potty bungee launch from the same movie.
Watching compilations with the old crew, including Ryan Dunn and Bam Margera, was sad, as I know Dunn is no longer with us, and Margera’s falling-out with Knoxville and the producers prevented him from appearing in this film. While many stunts throughout the series and the films were extremely dangerous, there is no denying Knoxville and his crew had undeniable chemistry. Most of the new sketches and stunts aren’t especially memorable, but the older segments more than make up for it. If you enjoy watching people humiliating themselves and enduring painful injuries, then “Jackass: Best and Last” is for you.
Now available on Blu-ray™ and DVD
