'Jackass: Best and Last' Review: These Guys Are Seriously Too Old For This $#!+

There are a couple of moments in Jackass: Best and Last, the sixth and final Jackass movie, where Johnny Knoxville legitimately chokes up acknowledging the end of an era for the crew. It would almost be touching if the scene did not precede one of the many, many sequences in the film devoted to … how do I say this without setting off brand filters … the unsolicited transgression of the posterior frontier.

How do we know that the Jackass crew is entirely too old to still be doing this? There are a number of clues. Almost half of Best and Last, for instance, recycles old clips from previous movies and the television show, along with a few never-before-seen sequences (except for those who have seen them on YouTube, like the first-ever Jackass stunt, in which Knoxville strapped on a bulletproof vest and shot himself in the chest). The old clips also highlight how much the crew has aged in 26 years (and the loss of Ryan Dunn). There’s also a sequence in which Knoxville trots out his Bad Grandpa character again (to visit a male strip club), and you can’t help but consider that Knoxville is much closer in age to the Grandpa now than he is to the Knoxville of the MTV days.

There’s also this: more than one stunt involves a reference to age-specific colonoscopies, including one in which Steve-O receives a rectal exam from a robot that uses chunky peanut butter as lubricant (do not attempt to eat during Jackass: Best and Last) and another in which several of the Jackass crew play naked Twister after drinking the turbocharged colonoscopy laxative (there is a lot of poop and puking involved).

There are so many butt stunts. One guy shoves a toy car up his rectum and walks into a doctor’s office to get a rectal exam. Steve-O at one point shoots (or, rather, dribbles) a ping-pong ball out of his behind. And poor, poor Zach Holmes, the very large man who at one point has something retrieved from his behind by another cast member in an escape-room stunt, and at yet another, is lowered (while naked) onto various cast members until Ehren McGhehey is literally suffocating because his face is pressed so hard into Holmes’ behind.

I should be content to pass the remainder of my mortal days without ever again beholding a naked man of middle years being entered from behind.

The hardest part of Jackass: Best and Last, however, comes during the few times they continue to attempt difficult physical stunts, because it’s hard not to recoil at the prospect of actual death. To see Ehren McGhehey electrocuted so badly that he passes out isn’t really funny anymore; it’s sad. And Knoxville shied away from the dangerous physical stunts except for his quixotic insistence on being tossed into the air by another bull, which resulted in what I believe was his 16th concussion and his eventual removal upon a stretcher. Usually, those stunts are followed by laughter from the crew, but there was a tense few seconds where I don’t think they were sure he’d survived it.

There are a lot of moments in Jackass: Best and Last that are more sad than funny, so much so that I was often relieved to rewatch Best Of clips, because at least I knew the outcome. That’s not to say there isn’t a smattering of iconic Jackass stunts. Easily my favorite of the movie was the return of Bam Margera — looking very much worse for wear — who, among others, was left in a pitch-black room with what they thought was a deadly rattlesnake while Knoxville (wearing night-vision goggles) pinched them with jumper cables. That was just good clean fun, although I remain frankly astonished that Margera — given his very recent and well-documented commerce with intoxicants — didn’t have a heart attack.

And in this movie, more than any other Jackass film, death felt like a real possibility, not because the stunts were extreme, but because these guys are not young and spry anymore. They’re middle-aged men trying to recapture the glory of their past (and earn one last paycheck before most of them have to return, presumably, to work in the real world). It’s also worth mentioning that seemingly forcing guys like Poopies (yes, that’s his name) and Ehren to participate in stunts against their will no longer feels like good-natured hazing. It feels like bullying.

Granted, I still laughed. A lot. I’m only human. But I cringed with pity almost as much as I laughed. And I’m glad that this is the last one. If they attempted a seventh movie, someone probably wouldn’t survive it.