Johnny Knoxville has a new movie coming, and it's not another round of self-inflicted chaos. His R-rated comedy Tiny Fugitives hits theaters September 18, and going by everything Collider is reporting plus the new trailer, this is Knoxville doing something we haven't really seen from him before: playing an actual character.

The premise, from what the trailer gives away, has Knoxville as a deranged (their word, and the trailer earns it) figure mixed up in some kind of chase caper. I'm being vague on purpose because the trailer is genuinely funny and I don't want to spoil the two or three moments that made me laugh out loud at my desk. The R rating is not decorative, is what I'll say. This thing goes there.

Look, I have a soft spot for Knoxville the size of a shopping cart to the groin. The Jackass movies are, whatever else you want to say about them, some of the most committed comedy ever put on film. But the interesting Knoxville has always been the one stretching past pure stunt work, and there's a thread running from Bad Grandpa, where he disappeared into a character for a whole movie, to stuff like Action Point, where he clearly wanted to be doing more than taking hits. Tiny Fugitives reads like him pushing all the way in that direction. A full character role in a scripted R-rated comedy, no safety net of a hidden-camera premise.

None of this means he's done with Jackass. The source doesn't say that and I won't either. But a lead role like this is a real swing for a guy who built his name on bodily harm, and it lands at a moment when a mid-budget R-rated comedy aimed at adults feels like an endangered species worth protecting.

September 18 puts it in that nice post-summer slot where studios park counterprogramming and occasionally a weird little hit escapes. I've been saying all summer that theatrical was quietly rebuilding itself, and the fall slate keeping that momentum going depends on movies exactly like this one.

So yeah. September 18. Watch the trailer cold if you can, it's better that way.