Jackass Forever (2022)

There is a particular kind of cultural artefact that arrives fully formed, leaves a generation slightly traumatised, and then disappears before anyone can really explain what it was. Jackass was one of those things. Starting as an MTV series in 2000, it was built on a simple, almost perverse premise: a group of friends filming themselves doing genuinely dangerous, frequently disgusting, and occasionally inspired stunts with little concern for dignity or personal safety. Three theatrical films followed between 2002 and 2010, and the franchise became something of a cultural touchstone for a generation of teenagers who probably watched things they really shouldn't have. Jackass Forever arrives in 2022 as the fourth main entry in that run, billed (not for the first time, it should be said) as a final chapter, and carrying with it all the weight of an audience that grew up alongside the original crew.

Jeff Tremaine, who has directed across the Jackass franchise from the very beginning, returns to helm this instalment, produced through the long-standing partnership of Dickhouse Productions with Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment Studios. Tremaine's work on the series has always operated in the strange space between documentary and performance, and his familiarity with this material and these people is self-evident. If you want a sense of where he has taken the format before, the blog has reviews of Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa and Jackass 3.5, both directed by Tremaine, which give a reasonable indication of how the franchise has evolved and stretched over the years. The returning core cast here is the familiar one: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, and Jason "Wee Man" Acuña, all of them veterans of the original series and films, all of them now well into their forties. Knoxville, who has had a reasonably varied career outside the franchise (including appearances in films such as The Dukes of Hazzard and The Ringer), remains the de facto frontman, and the physical commitment he and his colleagues bring to the material is, whatever else you might say about it, genuinely impressive for people of their age. Alongside the established names, a new generation of performers joins the crew, introduced as potential successors to the anarchic spirit of the original run. Whether they manage to carry that spirit is, naturally, the central question.

The film runs at 96 minutes, a polished but unremarkable length for this kind of feature, and it arrived in cinemas in February 2022 to a reception that was broadly warm from long-term fans, though with some of the usual reservations about whether the format still has genuine energy or whether it is running on goodwill and nostalgia. It is, on the surface, exactly what it says it is: stunts, chaos, and a group of people doing things that reasonable adults would decline. What it is beneath the surface is, as ever with Jackass, a slightly more complicated question.

Jackass Forever tries really hard to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle stupidity of the early 2000s, and sure, there are a few moments that make you gasp or laugh out loud, because let’s be honest, watching someone get attacked by a swarm of bees will always be funny on some primal level. The old crew (Steve-O, Wee Man, Pontius, Johnny Knoxville doing his best not-to-die face) are still game, still bruised, still somehow doing this at their age. Respect. But the truth is, it’s just not the same without Bam Margera. His absence is felt. He wasn’t just a cast member, he was chaos with a skateboard, unpredictable, wild, and half the reason the stunts felt dangerous. Without him, it leans too hard on nostalgia and too little on genuine surprise. And the new cast? They’re ok I guess, but they don’t bring that same anarchic spark. They feel more like hired performers than unhinged friends just filming dumb shit in a backyard. It’s polished. Too polished. Feels like a reboot made for streaming, not a VHS tape passed around school. The stunts are bigger, the cameras better, but the soul’s thinner. It’s loud, it’s gross, it’s got a few good gags, but it lacks the raw, reckless heart of the original run. Watchable if you’re nostalgic, but mostly a reminder that some things shouldn’t come back. No Bam? No good.

I suppose that is the thing with franchises built on genuine spontaneity, they can reproduce the conditions but not quite the feeling. There is something a bit sad about watching a crew that once felt genuinely reckless now operating with better cameras, bigger production values, and the clear knowledge that this is a theatrical release rather than something filmed on a handycam in someone's garden. The newcomers are fine, in a professional sort of way, but fine is exactly the wrong quality for Jackass. You want unhinged, you want the sense that something could genuinely go wrong in ways nobody planned for. Without that edge, and without Bam, the whole thing ends up feeling more like a tribute act than the real thing. Worth a watch if you have history with the franchise, but I found myself spending as much time thinking about the old stuff as actually enjoying what was in front of me. Some reunions are better left as memories.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2022  | Watched: 2025-09-07

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Jackass Forever (2022) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Jeff Tremaine: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013) · Jackass: Gumball Rally 3000 Special (2002) · Jackass 3.5 (2011) · Jackass 2.5 (2007)
More with Johnny Knoxville: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013) · Skiptrace (2016) · The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) · The Ringer (2005)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)