Although best known as the de-facto leader of the Jackass Forever, bookending the movie franchise.
Yet despite his undeniable success in bringing Jackass' self-inflicted pain to the masses, Knoxville also has a more serious side to his acting repertoire. Since moving to California in 1989 and initially failing to find his self-proclaimed "big break" as an actor, Knoxville has gone on to star in numerous noteworthy films. Knoxville's obvious slapstick talents have ensured a string of comedic appearances for the iconic stuntman in riotous movies such as Nature Calls, The Ringer, and Jackass' own spinoff Bad Grandpa.
While Knoxville's comedic chops and penchant for physical humor make him a safe bet for most comedy projects, some of his best movie performances to date have arrived in more serious roles such as Sonny West in Elvis & Nixon and James in Jess Bond's Rosy. In addition, Knoxville has a keen eye for producing a wide spectrum of documentary films released by his own production company Dickhouse Productions, although both these projects and his documentary-style films for the Jackass .5 series and Big Brother will not be considered here. As a result, here's every Johnny Knoxville movie ranked from worst to best, including Jackass Forever.
32. Deuces Wild
Deuces Wild sees Leon Anthony (Stephen Dorff) vow to clean up the criminal "junk on the streets," but no amount of vengeance fuelled action sequences can save Scott Kalvert's film from the ignominy of last place on this ranking. Deuces Wild is a wholly derivative movie that unsuccessfully attempts to tap into The Sopranos' mafioso-style narrative but with none of the seminal HBO drama's finesse. Knoxville's appearance in Deuces Wild is mercifully rather brief given his fledgling acting career in 2002, with the Jackass star playing low-level gangster Vinnie "Fish."
31. Life Without Dick
A limp attempt at a satirical black comedy, Life Without Dick centers on Colleen Gibson (And Just Like That's Sarah Jessica Parker), who accidentally kills her boyfriend, Dick Rasmusson (Johnny Knoxville), after finding out he has been cheating on her and is planning to leave. Through a convoluted series of events, Gibson's fate becomes intertwined with local Irish mobster Daniel Gallagher (Harry Connick Jr.) as she becomes more and more adept as the mob's new hitman. Knoxville's turn as Gibson's sleazy boyfriend plays into his strengths an actor here, but his part in the film is all too brief, with Life Without Dick's straight-to-DVD fate confirming its existence as a pale imitation of the infinitely wittier The Whole Nine Yards that released two years earlier.
30. Father Of Invention
Currently holding a 0% critical consensus on ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Father of Invention sees infomercial guru Robert Axle (Kevin Spacey) lose his home and fortune after one of his inventions maims thousands of customers, forcing him to move in with his daughter and her roommates. This should, in theory, set up a hilarious premise, but Father of Invention falls victim to its own relentless optimism, which makes the whole film present as a poorly executed advert for family virtues. Spacey's Robert Axle carries an otherwise paper-thin narrative for the majority of Father of Invention, while the movie's other stars, Johnny Knoxville and Camilla Belle, suffer from a weak script.
29. Big Trouble
Based on the Dave Barry novel of the same name, David Sonnenfeld's Big Trouble boasts a stellar cast that seemingly gets lost in an overly convoluted plot. The Santa Clause's Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Dennis Farina, Zooey Deschanel, Tom Sizemore, Stanley Tucci, and Johnny Knoxville all star, but Big Trouble creates its own problems through a lack of compelling character motivations that create a void of emotion across its runtime. An ill-advised subplot of smuggling a nuclear bomb also landed poorly with audiences in 2002, with Big Trouble ironically becoming a big box office bomb for Touchstone and Buena Vista Pictures.
28. Half Magic
Heather Graham writes and stars in her own comedy Half Magic which translates as a half-hearted attempt at recreating Heather Graham's film loses sight of its genuinely compelling social message in favor of tired gal-pal comedy tropes.
27. Action Point
Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius' brainchild proves that the Jackass franchise truly captured lightning in a bottle - and is not an easy premise to replicate despite its simple formula. Action Point uses Jackass' pain-inducing stunts as a vehicle for its story about a poorly run theme park, but the result is a jarring viewing experience that cannot hold a candle to the pair's Jackass turns, nor the Borat-Esque narrative structure Pontius and Knoxville are attempting to reproduce.
26. Movie 43
On paper, Movie 43, as a movie, it fails spectacularly to marry its disparate direction styles into a cohesive narrative, with the film's plot bordering on the indecipherable. This said, Knoxville's turn as the Leprechaun-killing Pete is still riotous viewing, even if it carries absolutely no bearing on Movie 43's overall direction or foggy, half-baked messages.
25. Mainstream
Gia Coppola's sideswipe at viral fame in the contemporary age offers an inventive if well-trodden perspective on the pitfalls of social media. Andrew Garfield's (The Amazing Spider-Man) singular talents as a conduit for its overarching message, but Mainstream does fall victim to its own grandeur by not offering up any new opinions on the current state of technology.
24. Nature Calls
Johnny Knoxville's sneering portrayal of Kirk is a redemptive facet of an otherwise tone-deaf movie from director Todd Rohal. Nature Calls sees Knoxville's Kirk and Patton Oswalt's Randy go toe to toe over, leading a new batch of Boy Scouts on an ill-advised camping trip to claim their badge of "manhood." While punctuated by funny moments, Nature Calls never quite settles on a target audience, with its crude humor often skewing far past age-appropriate jokes for its target PG-13 audiences. However, if for no other reason, Nature Calls is worth a single viewing simply to catch the last on-screen performance of the late comedy legend Patrice O'Neal.
23. Daltry Calhoun
Katrina Holden Bronson's Daltry Calhoun packs a lot of heart into its 100-minute runtime, with only a stuttering narrative holding it back from being a far superior movie. Johnny Knoxville stars as the titular protagonist, a seed and sod entrepreneur whose life is turned upside down by the unannounced visit of his estranged teenage daughter. Elizabeth Banks and Juliette Lewis also provide strong performances to back up Knoxville's second leading role, making Daltry Calhoun a serviceable fuzzy comedy even if it is not the most gripping of stories.
