Johnny Knoxville

The laughter around a stunt often matters as much as the stunt itself. In Jackass: Best and Last (2026), Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and Chris Pontius make one another’s physical discomfort oddly companionable. We laughed because nobody seemed to be protecting his dignity, and the others’ pleasure was hard to resist. That shared willingness to look foolish is what we value most in Knoxville’s work as a producer.

Knoxville co-created the television series Jackass with Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jonze in 2000, and Jackass: The Movie (2002) established the feature format. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013), which he co-wrote and produced, put a narrative framework around the stunts. Jackass Forever (2022) brought the core crew back after a long gap. Those changes matter, but the appeal we find in the farewell is still the simplest one: people who enjoy being ridiculous together.

Tremaine and Jonze remain recurring production partners through Dickhouse Productions, while cinematographer Dimitry Elyashkevich is another regular collaborator. Knoxville deserves credit as part of that group, rather than as the sole author of its humour. In Jackass: Best and Last, his willingness to join in helps keep the spectacle of friends hurting one another from turning sour. Nobody needs to seem cleverer than the others, so laughter can carry a stunt whose premise would not sustain much scrutiny.

Jackass: Best and Last is nevertheless too reliant on old footage. The new stunts do not give the farewell enough of its own, and affection only partly excuses that shortage. It is worth an evening for those who like this kind of comedy, with a firm caveat about how much is familiar. Knoxville needed to be stricter about how much of the friends’ past deserved another outing. Come for the company, and do not expect the new material to justify the whole evening.