'Jackass: Best and Last’ Review: The Last Great American Idiots Ride Off Into the Sunset
At some point in life, every daredevil must hang up their cape. It’s bittersweet, but also deeply emotional. Last January, when Johnny Knoxville announced that Jackass was concluding with one final feature, Best and Last, I responded by binging every single movie (excluding the .5s, of course). Admittedly, I hadn’t seen the first three before. And I got emotional.
While early 2000s pop culture was pushing toxic masculinity at the height of Spike TV, Jackass was a counterprogram. These dudes were so secure in their own (and each other’s) bodies that they conducted the silliest of pranks/experiments on one another in the nude. They were out there holding another’s taint for the hyucks. When I choked up over Bam Margera pissing on his friends in Jackass 3D and them reacting like it was a mild inconvenience, it all clicked. They were the blueprint or the first positive representation of healthy masculinity, or what a man should be. Yeah, they’re mutilating each other, but behind those pranks is a lot of tenderness and love shared between these men who never judged or showed an ounce of homophobia. They’ve literally explored each other's bodies for the sake of art, and even that straight culture homoeroticism perfectly countered a homophobic time in comedy.
So it’s ultimately bittersweet to see that sun set for Knoxville, Steve‑O, Wee Man, Danger Ehren, and the rest of the crew (oh, and the new members from Jackass Forever are here too, I guess). Best and Last is a beautiful swan song – a love letter to generational idiocy at its highest form that (not to hyperbolize) we probably won’t ever see again in our lifetime.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
MPA Rating: R (for extremely dangerous stunts and crude material throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language and sexual material)
Runtime: 1 Hour and 32 Minutes
Language: English
Production Companies: Paramount Pictures, Dickhouse Productions, Gorilla Flicks
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Jason "Wee Man" Acuña, Dave England, Ehren "Danger" McGhehey, Preston Lacy, Sean "Poopies" McInerney, Zach Holmes, Rachel Wolfson, Jasper
The Jackass crew returns to perform their final set of stupid, outrageous, and dangerous stunts and pranks, marking the end of the franchise. Alongside the new material, the film unearths alternate cuts (like Bam’s unseen footage from the snake prank in Jackass Forever) and never-before-seen unaired stunts (including the Escaped Convict bit), all tied together with fresh mayhem for one final sendoff.
Jackass: Best and Last’s farewell works best when it bleeds forward, not backward.
Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, Dave England, "Larry," Zach Holmes, Rachel Wolfson, Sean "Poopies" McInerney, Jasper, Wee Man, "Dark Shark," Preston Lacy, Danger Ehren, and Chris Pontius in jackass: best and last from Paramount Pictures. | © 2026 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Jackass: Best and Last is all in the title. It wants to give you the greatest hits while letting you relive 25 years of stupidity. The film oscillates between 40% clip show and 60% new/unearthed material. If you’re binging or considering bingeing the series in preparation, don't. Sometimes it just plays clips from each previous entry (even Bad Grandpa), as if handpicked by Knoxville and crew. Occasionally, we see the classics extended – behind‑the‑scenes, alternate takes, archive footage you can’t even find on the internet, finally unearthed. Then it just cuts to highlight reels of each member from prior flicks or the series. Nevertheless, Jackass, while a beautiful love letter to friends, pranks, stupid activities, its legacy, and its audience, deserves more than a greatest hits clip show with extra steps.
That said, Best and Last has its fair share of damn good new material. The new stunts are still outrageously funny, stemming entirely from the Jackass crew’s camaraderie, riffs, and playful reactions. Many involve Danger Ehren and Chris Pontius getting electrocuted in hilarious ways, or Steve‑O getting a prostate exam from a bipedal robot voiced by Adam Ray. Knoxville is more of a ringleader now, orchestrating rather than participating. This is not an issue considering he and much of the crew can’t afford another major concussion, but Knoxville is still having his fun. The man’s already a silver fox, and he ramps up his hotness in a prank where his arm is a battery and every flex literally sends electricity to whoever is hooked up to him.
Given the finality of it all, it’s hard not to get choked up hearing that intro disclaimer or seeing the Dickhouse logo before it begins. Knoxville’s first-ever stunt involved a gun to his fucking chest, tied with the description “the birth of Jackass.” It hits even harder when, on the first day of shooting, series director Jeff Tremaine asks Knoxville about this Jackass being the last one, and he instantly wells up. You see it across the cast; they all feel the weight of this chapter ending. Their injuries, endured for our entertainment, also symbolize something else: what true friendship looks like. If you thought Toy Story 5 was the only fourth sequel dropping this month that would make you cry, think again.
Best and Last’s old clips slaps, but the new cast gets slapped aside.
Chris Pontius and Johnny Knoxville in jackass: best and last from Paramount Pictures. | © 2026 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
For all its commitment to the format, Best and Last frustratingly leaves its newbies, introduced in Forever, out to dry. I get it. Knoxville doesn’t want to pass the torch. Why should he? There’s never going to be another ringleader quite like him. But given that Forever made a point of inducting a new school of sickos, it’s disappointing to see how underutilized they are now. Zach Holmes gets a good amount of hits, but Jasper has about one prank done to him, and his dad, Dark Shark, plus the only woman in the group, Rachel Wolfson, are completely sidelined, reduced to spectators and reaction noise. Justice for Wolfson, my scorpion-pierced queen.
The compilation aspect underwhelms, but for people reliving the old footage, it will have you looking like Anton Ego at the end of Ratatouille, remembering your younger self and the first time you saw these stunts. I was a late arrival myself; my first Jackass film was Bad Grandpa, which my high school best friend and I snuck into because we weren’t of R‑rated age yet. We all have our attachments in some form, and reliving those *Weezer voice* MEMORIES makes you really want to go back there. The film clocks in at a tight 90 minutes, as Jackass movies do, and for the most part, it’s so breezy you almost don’t want it to end.
LAST STATEMENT
Jackass: Best and Last may lean too heavily on nostalgia and greatest-hits recycling, but the crew’s infectious camaraderie, genuine affection, and commitment to glorious stupidity make for a heartfelt and hilariously entertaining farewell.
