Say what you will about Macon Blair, but he is a creative more than comfortable with the strange and off-putting. Whether he’s working as an actor, especially in collaboration with childhood friend Jeremy Saulnier, or directing his own projects, Blair goes in for the chaos. Idiots follows his Grand Jury-winning debut I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore (2017) and his fittingly wacky remake of Troma’s crown jewel The Toxic Avenger (2023). Like his preceding directorial efforts, Idiots gives love to the “low class” and the misfits even (and especially) at their least palatable. After nearly ten years of its development being stopped and started, Idiots seeing the light of day is impressive in its own right. It doesn’t try to reinvent what the road trip/stoner-esque comedy is. While the craft and character work are quite fun, on par with other projects Blair’s been involved in, the pacing and story beats leave the film without momentum until its wacky final act.

Idiots follows Davis (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Mark (Dave Franco), a pair of coworkers hired to discreetly transport clients to rehabilitation facilities. Davis is seemingly incapable of holding down a consistent job, mostly because well-intentioned screw-ups get him into serious trouble. Mark is in a similar boat, but his screw-ups stem from impulsive behavior and questionable substances provided by his roommate (played by Blair). Their first job is transferring troubled teen Sheridan (Mason Thames) to a pricey rehab. What starts as a straightforward trip becomes increasingly derailed and dangerous as Davis and Mark discover exactly why Sheridan’s horrifically affluent family is shipping him off.

The strongest point of Idiots is its craft. Visually, the film is seamless despite the constant tonal shifts from low-stakes road trip to high-octane action on a dime. The cinematography and editing teams, led by Guillermo Garza and Dane McMaster respectively, handle these tone switches with ease. 

Part of this comes from the cohesive look of the setting; the team certainly made great use of shooting on site in Paulding County, Georgia. The charm of a rundown small town is kept consistent even when the reality gets a bit heightened. It never feels too jarring whenever the road trip portions of the film are suddenly halted when Mark and Davis have to attempt to outwit whatever obstacle Sheridan set up for them. With Blair’s competent direction, the style of the film never feels too obstructive. There’s not a speed ramp or low-angle shot that feels unearned; the visual style simply leans into wherever the script demands it goes. 

Jackson, Franco, and Thames each put out interesting performances. Davis and Mark are both clearly aware of their new rock bottoms, even without Sheridan’s constant reminders and jabs, although they approach this realization in different ways. In the classic buddy comedy dichotomy, Davis is committed to self-improvement at the risk of being a square while Mark is content to remain unchanged so long as he can find a way to keep his head above water. It’s not a novel dynamic by any means, but Jackson and Franco are adept at adding their own layers to standard archetypes. 

Thames’ performance as Sheridan helps in enhancing Dave and Mark beyond standard lovable screw-ups into protagonists you truly want to root for. Thames is already quite adept at playing off of older actors, as he demonstrated in The Black Phone (2021) and its sequel. However, it’s fun to see Thames nail being an absolutely unrepentant asshole. Sheridan is essentially a proxy for those who live by leeching off others and, consequently, ruin the lives of anyone who gets in their orbit. While his facade of playing the poor little rich kid gets broken quite easily, it’s equal parts fun and frustrating to constantly see him try and often succeed in getting the upper hand.

Unfortunately, as someone who does enjoy Blair’s comedic writing, I think that it doesn’t particularly work here as often as I’d like. There are definitely some great one-liners, including a shoutout to Labyrinth (1986) that got a huge laugh out of me. 

However, it never feels like there’s quite enough time for the characters to effectively interact and play off each other. Most of this comes from the side characters that either get roped into Sheridan’s schemes or Davis and Mark’s attempts to get the drop-off back in check. The particular stand-outs are Irina (Kiernan Shipka), who steals the show in the stand-out motel sequences of the film, and vigilante gang leader Koko (Peter Dinklage). The rest of the parade of side characters either do not make an impression or are so heightened out of the fairly grounded reality of the story that they just don’t click and sometimes feel like they belong in a different film altogether.

Where Idiots’ writing struggled the most is its story. Part of this may be due to the film’s stop-and-start decade of development in which it seems most aspects were cut apart and pieced together before this iteration of Idiots began filming. The only stakes ever put into play for the bulk of the film are the anticipated paycheck for completing the job. Sheridan also shows his hand very early on in the runtime, so there’s no real mystery as to what sort of problem will come up next. Because of this, the pacing goes from breezy and kinetic to feeling like a constant one-upping of what came before without rhyme or reason. Nothing ever feels as though it fully resolves before moving onto the next bit or set piece. 

This is a problem when the heart of the film feels like it’s supposed to be in character-driven beats and interactions. It’s hard to successfully develop character relationships, especially in a film committed to a breezy 100-minute runtime, when it just drifts from setpiece to setpiece. It unfortunately also means that Blair’s brand of humor gets incredibly diluted in this attempt to squeeze in as many zany characters and situations as possible.

In the final act, the film goes from mostly grounded to completely off the rails with the introduction of Koko and his gang. While the side characters up to this point are one-note but generally not obtrusive, Koko’s gang is wildly cartoonish in comparison. The enforcer and aspiring rapper of the group, Pricka Bush Da Werewoof (Nicholas Braun), is the weakest link in this regard and feels like he’d be more at home in a Troma film rather than this one. Not only does the tonal shift feel largely unearned, but it’s where the little thematic throughline of the film goes from tastefully implied to hamfistedly written. The film just outright starts explaining basic class theory to the audience rather than just letting the parallels of bad decisions, and the privilege of who gets to make them, speak for themselves among the three leads. 

Overall, Idiots isn’t Macon Blair’s best work, but it’s a serviceable watch, particularly after a beer or two. The inability to fully let a plot beat finish or give any one character their moment to shine really hurts the more character-driven attempt at a raunchy action comedy. Hopefully Blair’s next project is free from the production woes that plagued his last two releases. 

Review Courtesy of Red Broadwell

Feature Image credit to IFC