★★★ (3 out of 4)
Maybe you think “Idiots” is an idiot name for a movie. Listen up. This comedy disrupter was once titled “The Shitheads” before wiser heads prevailed, though there is precious little wisdom coursing through this wild thing. Laughs, yes. Rational thought, who needs it.
I think first you should know something about the idiot (affectionately said) who made “Idiots.” He’s Macon Blair, a Virginia-born filmmaker, actor and comic book writer who made his 2017 directing debut with a film called “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,” which—wait for it—won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. One critic opined that it "confidently walks the shrunken edge of laugh-out-loud funny and cringe-inducing violence, and it does so with a nonchalant self-assurance," noting that its "microcosm of ennui, indifference, and clumsy violence reflects a number of themes so prevalent in this society."
So take all that in before you get condescending about “Idiots,” which does much the same thing with a twist. There is a throughline to the plot. Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. play two losers—OK, call them shitheads—who between their usual criminal scams take a quick-buck job to transport a lavishly spoiled rich kid named Sheridan Kimberly (Mason Thames) to rehab. Sounds like an easy gig. Just you wait.
Rated R for “up-close-and-personal violence, unhinged language, sexuality, and drug-fueled scatology.” That doesn’t begin to describe the twisted hellraising on tap.
Right away I thought of “The Last Detail,” a 1973 classic from director Hal Ashby and screenwriter Robert Towne in which Jack Nicholson and his Navy buddies transport a klepto sailor (Randy Quaid) to the brig. If Blair did a klepto thing with his screenplay, so what? At least he’s stealing from the best. And does he ever put his own spin on it. After a detour with a 2023 redo of “The Toxic Avenger,” Blair is back on the small-time crook fringes which is definitely his happy place.
Jackson J. plays a character who feels legit. He’s Davis, a God-fearing screw-up whose side hustle is ferrying troubled kids to get help. Trouble starts when Davis is assigned a partner. That’s Franco’s Mark, a drug-addled bundle of nervous criminal energy. And when these three get in Mark’s car for a road trip through Georgia country roads, you’d expect the usual hijinks. Blair, bless him, doesn’t do things the usual way.
I thought the kid would be a brat. Who knew he’d be the Kyser Soze of the internet, a true menace to society and the toxic child of social media perversion and terror? How fun to see Thames—the star of kiddie pacifiers (“How to Train Your Dragon”) and romcom swill (“Regretting You”)—go the full monster route. Thames is having a blast with the explosion of id he’s playing. And in the darker recesses of your heart, you will too. “Idiots” is rated R for what the gatekeepers call “up-close-and-personal violence, unhinged language, some sexuality, and drug-fueled scatology.”
That doesn’t begin to describe the twisted hellraising on tap. I won’t describe it either. Some things are too degenerate to spoil. I will say that Blair does not—repeat NOT—follow the traditional route. Thames, Jackson Jr. and Franco are his more than willing accomplices. But wait till to see who our lead trio meets along the way.
Kiernan Shipka, so far from Don Draper’s daughter on “Mad Men” that she can barely look back, plays a Slavic stripper. And rapper Killer Mike crushes it as a conflicted man of God. But it’s Sheridan’s disciples who will blow your hair back. I though Peter Dinklage hit the limit until I encountered “Succession” comic VIP Nicholas Braun as the tattooed, grilled and braided Pricka Bush Da Werewoof, a lycan-loving creature with a song in his heart about “lickin’ up his blood like it’s a l’il treat.” Braun is too wicked wonky to miss.
And so is “Idiots.” Yeah, the film is an unholy mess, always threatening to go off the hinges into the cloud cuckoo land of incoherence. It’s the opposite of predictable, which to me is a good thing. It’s also a treat to see how Blair sneaks in sharply satiric jabs at one-percenters and device-addicted youth as children of the damned. The view from the cracked mirror Black holds up to the world looks chillingly familiar. There’s a searching mind at play in “Idiots.” You may have to work to dig it out. Don’t be a shithead—just do it, before we all have to hitch a ride to therapy.