Jackass: Best And Last (18)

Johnny Knoxville and the gang return for a final hurrah of bruising pranks and outrageous stunts, directed by Jeff Tremaine. Most of the cast of Jackass Forever return including Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Jason "Wee Man" Acuna and Dave England. They revisit some of the show's most popular segments and perform new material including bone-crunching close encounters with a robot. As with all films in the series, do not try anything you see at home.

LondonNet Film Review

Jackass: Best And Last (18) Film Review from LondonNet

Johnny Knoxville is strapped into a homemade electric chair towards the end of Jackass: Best And Last when fellow prankster Chris Pontius asks him bluntly if this fifth instalment of manchild’s play really is the end of knuckleheaded showmanship. With an audible voice crack, Knoxville confirms this madcap compilation of favourite pratfalls and new eye-watering escapades is the final time we will have to endure grown men weathering body blows and electric shocks to their exposed nether portions…

By no means the funniest chapter of tomfoolery – most recent films have fallen victim to the law of diminishing returns – the foul-mouthed farewell boasts enough stand-out moments and displays of genuine emotion to warrant a return of familiar faces and buttocks. Most of the cast of Jackass Forever are back including Steve-O, Pontius, Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, Dave England, Preston Lacy, Jasper Dolphin, Zach Holmes, “Danger Ehren” McGhehey, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Compston “Dark Shark” Wilson and Rachel Wolfson. Disappointingly, Wolfson – the sole antidote to all that testosterone sloshing about on screen – is a passive observer almost the entire film.

Jackass: Best And Last is prefaced by the usual disclaimer that all stunts depicted on screen have been “performed by professionals”. Series regular Jeff Tremaine returns to the director’s chair and opens with unaired footage of the first stunt imagined for the MTV series, captured in January 1998. Knoxville shoots himself in the chest with a loaded gun while wearing a bulletproof vest stuffed with adult magazines. An on-screen caption states the obvious: this is “extra stupid” and poses a very real chance of death.

More than once, Knoxville defies common sense and flirts with the Grim Reaper for the sake of a supposed laugh. His horrific close encounter with a charging bull is replayed in slow motion. Footage of him wheeling through the air like a limp rag doll and clattering to the ground is no chuckling matter.

New bouts of consensual self-harm including a hellish escape room and a nauseating rectal exam performed by a robot with a mechanical finger smeared with crunchy peanut butter are lacklustre compared with japes from the archive. Indeed, belly laughs are reserved for old material, such as Knoxville hanging out in a strip bar, in every sense, disguised as disgraceful octogenarian Irving Zisman.

In behind-the-scenes footage from this concluding foray, Knoxville admits to feeling sad that the end is nigh for his brotherhood of buffoons. Tremaine asks, off-screen, if castmate Pontius feels the same. “No, I’m not in touch with my emotions,” he cheerfully replies. A quarter of a century of bone-crunching one-upmanship will have that numbing effect.

– Jo Planter