Jackass Forever (2022)

The fourth (and hopefully final, for the sake of its cast) Jackass is a nostalgic laugh riot.

Despite its new failures and familiar assortment of dud stunts (Wee-Man being launched onto a pile of metal is a pretty lame payoff to that musical chairs gag), Jackass Forever inevitably benefits from a stronger emotional undertow than any of the series’ previous films.

“This isn’t a Mensa convention!” says one player. Is that disingenuous? Isn’t there, in fact, some advanced showbiz intelligence and surrealist savvy in the way Jackass is set up and edited? Either way, it has a horror-comedy impact.

As always, what’s so joyously, infectiously funny about “Jackass” is rarely the prank itself, but how funny they all find it to reduce each other to writhing heaps.

Jackass Forever is a hilarious, even genuinely touching reunion of America’s most vulgar performance artists. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel for the series or definitively say goodbye to it, nor does it need to — it’s simply enough to remember that some things never get old.