Writing stupid isn’t easy. Take Idiots, the raunchy two-hander from writer-director Macon Blair. The film follows two hapless morons, enthusiastically played by Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr., across a dutifully charted road-trip comedy as they escort a violently anti-social rich kid, Sheridan (Mason Thames), to rehab. Blair hits all the genre’s pitstops: His film spends the night at a rundown motel, destroys Mark’s beater sedan, and separates one of the travelers through a kidnapping scheme. The generic script, which has been sitting around since 2017, should’ve given Blair the freedom to make the type of R-rated Dumb And Dumber-style comedy they don’t make much anymore—if only some of that time had been spent punching up the writing.
Mark (Franco) and Davis (Jackson) begin the film at the bottom of the economic ladder. Idiots is about shades of stupidity, and the two represent different ends of the spectrum. Mark is more than happy to vape his life away while watching Bumfights at work, but Davis aspires to more. What that “more” actually is, the film never settles on. Idiots is the type of comedy that doesn’t have a straight man. It’s two dumb peas in a dumb pod, with Davis acting as the Butt-Head to Mark’s Beavis. But rather than playing a status game over who’s smarter, Idiots is about virtue. Unlike the obliviously blissful Mark, Davis is a god-fearing Christian who feels guilt for his brainless actions. When the film begins, both are out of a job and end up at Dorindo, a seedy subcontractor that, among other dubious activities, offers wealthy troubled teens a ride to rehab. Strangers at the onset, Mark and Davis simply need jobs, and their first assignment is to transport Sheridan (Thames), the heir to a diaper fortune, to another stop on his accountability-free future.
Idiots peaks early. After they’re waylaid with a flat tire, the trio spends the night at a mundane motel chain, where Sheridan drugs his escorts and escapes with a group of pasty guys from a nearby Grocery Retail Association convention. Eastbound And Down‘s casting directors would salivate over the number of belts straining to keep all those polos tucked into all those khakis. A locked-in Kiernan Shipka, playing hardened Eastern European stripper Irina, expands the roster but never gets to have any of the fun. She’s more or less a bridge to introduce Mark to her pot-smoking, gun-toting Baba (Lynn Wanlass). At best, she makes a good victim for Sheridan, who slowly reveals his unpredictability with sly manipulations and violent outbursts.
Blair’s knack for scatological splatter, which he brought to his amiable Toxic Avenger remake, keeps Idiots moving at a brisk pace. He slathers the film’s Last Detail plotting in a thick layer of grime, giving Idiots an undeniably sleazy milieu that helps it stand apart from other buddy comedies. Editor Dane McMaster smash-cuts around three electric performances from the film’s leads, who manage to find pathos in underdeveloped characters, particularly Jackson, who brings a hilarious vulnerability to Davis, though his growth never becomes catharsis. Franco, meanwhile, relishes playing the type of country-fried shitheels that Danny McBride and Jody Hill, who executive produce, have been bringing to HBO for nearly two decades.
It’s once the group gets back on the road that Idiots starts spinning its wheels. Sheridan, who’s also a social media influencer à la the Paul brothers, calls on his followers of low-rent scumbags, led by Koko (Peter Dinklage), to rescue him from his trip to rehab. While Dinklage plays to the reality of each scene, seamlessly transitioning from Sheridan’s hero to his captor, his rap-obsessed partner, Pricka Bush Da Werewolf (Nicholas Braun), is a hat on a Spirit Halloween werewolf mask. The character doesn’t jibe with the film’s tone, pushing Idiots further into the ludicrous, when the best moments come from the hard and often disgusting reality of the character’s screwups.
Blair imbues Idiots with the mean-spirited aggression of a Todd Phillips comedy, but he’s not quite sure if he wants redeemable heroes. He clearly has no trouble luxuriating in the gutter, but his comedy tries and fails to have it both ways. Rather than fully relying on its characters’ behavior to set up laughs, the film resorts to contrived situations and outcomes that are never funnier than when Mark suddenly falls down, goes boom. Charisma only takes Idiots so far. At some point, even the dumbest characters need some depth.
Director: Macon Blair
Writer: Macon Blair
Starring: Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage
Release Date: August 28, 2026
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