Critiquing the Finality of the Film

It's been more than twenty five years since the dawn of the Jackass franchise in which a bunch of goofballs pull pranks attempt dangerous stunts and get womped in the genitals over and over . Now it's got one more supposedly final film titled Jackass Best and Last. I'm Steven Thompson and joining me today on NPR's pop culture Happy Hour is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast, leaving the theater, hey Ronald. Hello Stephen. Also with us is Jordan Morris. He's the co host of Jordan Jessie Go and Free With Ads, Hey Jordan. Hey, hey, good to be here. And rounding out our panelist fs,reelance music and culture journalist Rienna Cruz, hey, Rienna. Hey, Steven, happy to be here. I bet you are happy to be here. Rihanna, I know you to have a jackass tattoo. Oh , well yes . Smack dab in the middle of my thigh, baby. As one does as one does. So it's very important that I pause to let people know about the plot. It is hard to confidently proclaim this to be the last jackass movie, given how much money the other films have made , and how often ringleader Johnny Knoxville has claimed to be getting out of the game once and for all since the franchise began on MTV back in two thousand. But Jackass Best and Last does feel like the closing of a chapter , many of these guys, including Knoxville himself, are well into middle age, which the latest film acknowledges by having eternal stalwart Steve O subject himself to a prostate exam courtesy of a wise cracking robot. And look, this is not the Odyssey. This is an anthology , kind of a greatest hits reel, kind of a clip show, kind of a victory lap, full of footage of guys getting flung from things and clberedaw and doused in bodily fluids. There's no plot beyond that, no real narrative thread beyond the basic understanding that this is the sort of thing you can only physically pull off for so long. Jackass Best and Last is in theaters now. Jordan, before you climb into a shopping cart and ride it off a rooftop, give me your take on Jackass Circa twenty twenty six. Okay, well yes, I was in the pocket for Jackass when it first aired on MTV. I was a scuzzy little teenager. I considered myself fairly punk rock. It spoke to me and I have seen all these movies in the theaters and yes, I laugh like a maniac. I think this would make a good double feature with hear me out , stop that train. Interesting , yes, agree. Stop that train, of course, the Rupaul Airplane homage that is also very, very funny. I think both of these movies like are joyously self consciously stupid and they just want to make you laugh. And I think that's nice. In a world of prestige dramaties, in a world where there's a lot of comedies that want to be clever or cute or charming. It's just it's nice to sit in the theater watching something where its main objective is just like, we want to make you laugh, we want to get laughs out of you. A mission accomplished , I will say that because of the kind of clip show nature of this movie, there's a lot of recycled stuff, a lot of stuff you've seen before. So it's maybe a little bit disappointing that they're not going out on the biggest stuff they've ever done, but as you mentioned , the fellows are older and you know they're probably not going to be getting gored by the craziest animals they've ever been gored by. So you know, I understand that part, but you know, if you kind of go into this knowing it's a little more of a tribute, a little more of a look back than I think you're gonna have a blast. Okay, how about you, Ronald? So I have watched every one of the jackasses. I watched the show on MTV . When you go from the show on MTV to the movie , you immediately realize that there are rated movies, whereas the show, MTV, they had a lot of restraint. And I find it interesting that this one best and last , they opened with one of the stunts that they could not show on MTV , which is if you know Jackass, that is the biggest difference between the shows to the movies, which is like now we can do all this stuff, right? So I've always liked them. I've always liked these stunts and I've realized while watching this fifth one two things. The first thing is I like when they do stunts. I like when they're throwing themselves off a cliff or going off a rocket and all that. I do not like when they're doing anything bodily flu id or anatomy related. It makes me uncomfortable. Even though I'm laughing, I'm still watching through my eyes like, oh it feels like body horror to me. The second thing I realized is my favorite gen re of any legacy sequel or any celebrity retrospective is exactly that, the retrospective. And this is very much a retrospective. And to see them being young people doing these stunts , it made so much sense. It was perfect, it made me feel good to watch them look back and watch them see themselves be young. But to watch them do it late forties and fifty year old men do and this . The first thing that always popped my head was, you don't have to do this. No one's making you this, you do not have to do this. And they keep and I'm like, just be careful. Listen, we don't know how everybody managed their money, okay? They might have to do this. That's exactly it. Yes, I'm like yeah what's going on there? I have not seen Wi Man's bank account. He may have to do this and you only see We Man in these movies you know what I mean? So like so it's very interesting to watch that. And I enjoyed that and I felt like a little bit sentimental thinking about my own life in comparison to the first one came out I was eighteen. I'm forty two now. Feels a lot like scary movie in the same sense of the amount of movies that have passed over the same passage of time. So worth watching. The one criticism I have is I have never liked the way that Jackasses dealt with fat people. They treat them like an oddity or a sideshow in a way that makes me very uncomfort punchline. Yes, and a way that they think is fun , but I think it 's not good for fat people who enjoy jackass that feel like, okay, what is everyone looking at me like now? But that's my only real quibble there. Other than that, I had a good time. Okay , Rianna, I've watched this film through your eyes, or at least I tried to. Oh, I'm grateful. No , honestly, I come down a little bit differently. And maybe part of that is that I'm younger , you know, so I'm not seeing jackass through schmaltzi, you know, earnest lens that I think the boys themselves in the movie are approaching it from. This was my least favorite of the franchise. You know I love jackass have watched all of the movies on several different occasions. You know, I didn't necessarily grow up with it, but I found it later in life and it has been a guiding light for me. I mean, WWJD's, what would Jack ask do? Exactly . Exactly . But this one for me, I don't know, it plays like a greatest hits compilation, you know? It feels like it was scrapped together super quickly. I don't really enjoy the reflective interview inserts that pepper the movie. You know, it slows the thing down in my opinion. I don't know. The thing about Jack asks to me is that even when the guys are doing the stupidest stunts on Earth , it's still fundamentally earnest . You know, there's an element of honesty and earnestness to it that is always there . And this one, I think does it on the sentimentality . And it's a turnoff for me a little bit. I wish it gave a little bit more. That being said, you know, a jackass great is still easy to laugh at. A lot of the footage that I've seen dozens of times still managed to make me laugh and I went with my little brother who hadn't seen any of the jackasses and he was laughing so hard with untainted eyes. Like this was all new footage to him, you know, and I appreciated that. Same with Steven . Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad that you brought that up. Yeah. It must be a very different viewing experience for somebody who has like lived for this series, watched every episode of the TV show, seen all the movies versus someone like me, who was twenty eight when Jackass premiered on MTV, already thought I was too good for it. I was about to become a dad. It wasn't my thing. And so now coming back and looking at it often through my fingers the way Ron ald described , you know, this felt to me a little bit like baby's first jackass. Yeah, totally. You're getting a clip show and a clip show for somebody who has seen the original clips a hundred times is going to hit very differently than it would for somebody who's kind of coming in large obviously I've been in the culture the entire time that this series has existed. I've seen bits and pieces of it and clips and YouTube and whatever . But like, you know, for me, this stuff still felt pretty new, even if I'd seen stray seconds of it here and there. What I found coming in as a newcomer, I immediately kind of identified a taxonomy of jackass bits , which to me greatly vary in how much I enjoy them. Basically, you can break them down into four categories. You have death defying stunts. You have Johnny Knoxville strapping himself to a rocket . They shoot the rocket over a lake. It either blows up on the launch pad or sends him hurtling into the lake. You've got stuff centered on pain tolerance, lots of mouse traps and tasers. Oh, this shows tasers so so much. Very often involving genitals . You have kind of endless bodily fluid s. Yes, lots and lots and lots of poop. Yuck, so so much . And then you've got the form of this show that I really enjoy, which is the sub genre I would call Wiley Coyote , where they set up some kind of visual slapstick. Yes. Yeah . Like one example and it's a very small example in this film. And Rihanna, you can tell me when this was used before or if this was new , you have a big guy and a little guy. They're tethered together with a bungee cord at the top of a bridge. Yes. The little guy jumps off the bridge , starts to bungee, but the force of him bungeeing down pulls the big guy off the bridge and they go pin wheeling into the water. First of all, I may I've said on this show before in the very first episode of this show, I love the show wipe out. Yes. The show wipe out was made for me bonks bloosh . That's my kind of physical stunt based comedy. And I think when Jackass is in that wiley coyote mode is when I enjoy it the most. You can see in the credits also they',re in on that, you know, in the credits there's producers wished to thank and then they have like Tom and Jerry, Buster Keaton, like they know who they're pulling from. Buster Keaton comes up a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. To that effect, I real ize when I'm seeing those stunts specifically, either the wildly coyote or when they're interacting with the real world in kind of prank style stunts or whatever they're doing , I had this epiphany in the moment and maybe this is something y'all already knew that a lot of the YouTubers that exist right now , I don't know if they have a lane if not for these guys on Jack son because I'm thinking about the stunts that I've seen on YouTube that don't faze me at all. No one's getting punched in the face with a giant hand or you know also chalk that one up as another giant win. Yes, that's one of my favorite all time of Jackass I'm thinking like these folks are the OGs of doing that . And I never thought of them as trailblazers in that way unless you sit out and think about the YouTube landscape right now, which is just a bunch of people in some cases doing stunts and pranks and doing stuff to each other just to get a simple audience. YouTube has democratized idiocy one hundred percent. They have done the exact opposite of what Jackass says in the disclaimer at the beginning and the end of the movie , which is they are doing these stunts at home and they have no business doing them. Yeah, I mean, I think what sets Jackass apart from that sort of thing is you know, like the original show was produced by Spike Jones, like an artsy filmmaker. And I think that like the jackass crew gets placed in the bro bucket a lot , but I think they're kind of more artsy punk guy. Yeah . And like the whole thing is a little more art project than it is bros bro and down . And I think that is the stuff that's the most fun of like when they do find some sort of Rube Goldberg , you know, incredibly baroque way to kick someone in the testicles. There's a there's a spinning wheel of boot in this attached to a conveyor belt. Very saw trout . Yeah, James Bond. Yes. Oh, holds great. Exactly. Again, something that I really admired about Stop that train is that like it's like, you know, how can we use all of the powers of our imagination? How can we use all of our creativity to be as dumb as possible? There's something kind of beautiful about it. And yeah, and I think that's the jackass stuff that I like the most. Like, you know, there's a famous jackass clip of someone sitting in a plastic chair and then someone kicks the chair out from under the And like that is very funny. But also , you know, then we have the conveyor belt attached to the whirling wheel of boots. And that stuff is the, oh my gosh, I can't believe they did that stuff that I think makes you remember Jackass. We've got a lot more to talk about. We will be right back after this break and we're back. I like the bits that I get the vibe nobody else here really likes. Like I like the body horror. I like the stupid you know my favorite jackasspit in maybe all of the movies is like a five second clip and it's called Bam Drops in and it's Bam Margera on top of a r amp and he comes down the ramp on a skateboard, goes right into the camera and then falls back like a pratfall. It's so silly. And I love the little bits and pieces that they put into these movies that feel like people just hanging out . You know, there's another clip where somebody jumps into a ceiling fan. Oh yes, I like that . Things like that that really, really get me , maybe part of what lost me with this movie is that all of the new gimmicks that we see are kind of heavily involved a little bit. Like there's a robot , quote unquote character that joins the group and it's voiced by Adam Ray. And the robot has kind of a scrappy do quality to it that I don't really love where it's just there to quip. And obviously it gets in on some of the pranks and some of the bits, but generally like there's an element of this is a little bit too far from what I love about the franchise and what I love about these stunts. And you know, I really liked the group dynamic and the editing of the movies made me feel like was a little bit askew and I'm not really sure why. Like I wish more of the group got to do tricks. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because there's clearly been an effort to diversify this franchise a little bit beyond a group of white dudes . But at the same time , several of the newer cast members spend a lot of time in this movie standing around and laughing and not necessarily participating . And I think part of it is that this is being presented as kind of a last hurrah for these old warriors. You know, Bam Margera is not in this film in the present day, but you know, Steve O has certainly had a very long and checkered career in this realm, Johnny Knoxville, you know, as kind of the ring leader. But I'm kind of surprised that this film didn't give some of the younger cast memb ers a little bit more space because if and when we get another Jackass movie, it's likely to be something like Jackass the Next Generation where the older guys are there to stand around watching the young guys get flung into things. Yeah , yeah, you know, I think that's what they were trying to do with Jackass forever, the last one. I think they were trying to spin off a group of younger jackasses . And yeah, for whatever reason that show or that movie they were trying to make out of that didn't work. Maybe I vaguely remember they were trying to make like a paramount plus series with the new cast and it just didn't happen. So yeah, it kind of feels like the new kids are here to do some of the stuff that the older guys can't. But also there is an element to where there are a handful of cast members where like they just seem to be standing around laughing. Well, an interesting thing about the Jackass franchise is that a bunch of these movies have zero point five installments attached to the movie, which essentially functions as like a group of like deleted scenes, extended universe, you know, larger, longer cuts of the sketches or whatever they do. Jackass forever had one. There was Jackass four point five. This feels like Jackass four point seven five. That's a good way to describe it. Because there is a lot of footage from the last movie that is repurposed. And I honestly felt like Jackass Forever was a good way to close the book. You know, you bring in new people, you kind of send off the old heads, there's an element of finality to it that I feel like here is there , but forced , you know, it felt like with the last one they effectively closed the book. Again, I'm saying all of this , I laughed so hard. Me and my brother laughed so hard. I was asking him outside what his favorite bits were and they were clips that like, I've seen a million times, you know? And it's like, yeah, that's the power of jackass you know,, to bring people together through laughter and poop humor. It's a great unifier. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So like all that to say, like, I enjoyed it, but it did feel maybe a little bit superficial. There's a scene early where Johnny Knoxville is getting choked up. He's like, this is the last one. And I remember there's several times in the movie in which he gets choked up, but he never takes off his sunglasses. So I felt like I didn't really feel those moments. So would you say forced he's talking about crying? No one's really crying. They're not even doing these candid shots of them being like, hey, man, we bit at this for a while. Yeah, there's kind of like this eulogy that they're doing for Ryan Dunn who died a few years back twenty eleven. And I'm using eulogy liberally. They just referenced that he's no longer with them. And every time I saw him, I felt a little tinge of emotion there. And Bam's not in the new movie. Clips of Bam Margera are there from the old movies , but he's not in the new movie. And for me, if you're going to close it out, you gotta bring everybody back. I need to see Rake Yorn, I need to see Baran Mgera, I need everybody there if we're properly going to give this the send off that it deserves . But instead what we kind of get is them referencing that this is the last one and me saying I don't really believe that. I believe that at all. Some of you will have children or you will do this again at some point in the future. And it might be Jackass the new generation, but Johnny Knoxville will still be around. Someone will be pulling the strings and it'll it'll move into whatever the next iteration is, but forced is a good word. It does feel forced in some ways. And again, like I said earlier, nobody's forcing you to do this. A funny detail I noticed that I thought really pointed to these guys are older now. In some of the old clips, you see them drinking like cheap beer. They're drinking like Miller High Life or similar. And in all the new footage , nobody points it out, but you can just see the set is littered with La Croix cans . Yep . So you know, I'm sure a lot of these guys are sober now . But you know, they're part of the arc for a lot of these Yeah.. Yeah , and you know, the cheap beer has been replaced with sugar free sparkling seltzer. As it has for so many of us. Oh for so yeah . All right, well that brings us to the end of our show. Rihanna Cruz, Jordan Morris, Ronald Young, Jr. Thanks so much for being here. I am so sorry I didn't bring any kind of gauntlet to prank you with, but I appreciate your participation in this discussion. Right. Peter Segel's got to run into all of our houses kick us with a giant boot. Happy to be here. Thanks for having us. You should have started this by saying hi, I'm Steven Thompson and welcome to Pop Culture App Miss Opportunities lost. All right, well just a reminder that signing up for pop culture happy hour plus is a great way to support our show and public radio and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsored free. So please go find out more at plus dot nprot org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker, Lennon Sherburne, Huffsophatha, and Mike Katziff, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reed . Hello Commin provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to pop culture happy hour from NPR. I'm Steven Thompson and we'll see you all next time .