Looks like those Jackass guys have saved the best ’til last

JACKASS FOREVER (R13, 96min)

Directed by Jeff Tremaine ★★★★

Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett

We’ve all got that friend who really doesn’t have the social skills to hold a conversation, but they feel they have to contribute to the table somehow, so they endlessly repeat the same gags, lines and thatone-funny-thing-that-happened-onetime.

But you don’t mind hearing the yarn for the 20th time, because they’re your friend, so that means you don’t have to always like everything they do, but you know you’ll always be there for them anyway.

After two decades, three series of the TV show and four movies, all of which I have dutifully watched, that’s pretty much how I feel about Jackass.

At this point in your journey through life, I figure you have a pretty good idea whether you find people tasering each other’s genitals and getting bitten in the face by a snake to be funny or not. But, at least we can all agree that someone getting fired out of a cannon into a lake will never grow old.

And that is what Jackass is – a series of stunts and gags presented by an affable and obnoxiously likeable bunch of guys who clearly love and respect each other very much, even as they are arranging to have one of their number punched in the balls by a heavyweight MMA fighter.

This time around, the film does acknowledge that a decade has passed since Jackass 3D by introducing some new blood – among other body fluids – to the crew.

But the core of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Wee Man et al remains intact. The very public breakdown and departure of Bam Margera is not mentioned, but he does appear here in a couple of segments.

Jackass, like Marvel movies and – I dunno, line dancing? – is one of those cultural phenomena you either like or you don’t. I’m not a huge fan, but I do reckon this is probably the best of the movies that I’ve seen. And it does carry with it an expectation that this might be the last trip in the exploding portaloo for the franchise.

In which case, farewell Jackass. You tried very hard – and you often succeeded.

❚ Jackass Forever is now screening in cinemas nationwide.

SEAN CLIVER Jackass, like Marvel movies and – I dunno, line dancing? – is one of those cultural phenomena you either like or you don’t.

Jackass is a series of stunts and gags presented by an affable and obnoxiously likeable bunch of guys who clearly love and respect each other very much, even as they are plotting some nasty trick on one of their number.