Is this unhinged road-trip “slob comedy” destined to become a cult-movie classic?
Idiots
Starring Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr. & Mason Thames
Directed by Macon Blair
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Aug. 28
The movie genre of “slob comedy,” celebrating lazy, anti-social, disruptive or juvenile behavior, became a thing in the ‘70s in the wake of flicks like National Lampoon’s Animal House and Porky’s.
Idiots mines a similar comedic vein, with a pair of mismatched underachievers trying to make a good impression in their new job for a low-budget transportation company. Their first gig: Teaming up to drive a rich, troubled teen to a rehab treatment facility. Simple, right? But that simple assignment derails into a colossal comedic pileup of drugs, danger and situational insanity.
Mark (Dave Franco) and Davis (O’Shea Jackson) are the “transport professionals,” and Sheridan (Mason Thames) the passenger. Mark’s a doper, Davis holds on to his deep Presbyterian roots, and Sheridan’s a spoiled-rotten uber-rich trust-fund kid whose obnoxiously bad behavior has made him a social-media superstar.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, it all starts with a flat tire, and unspools from there. There’s projectile diarrhea, soda spiked with horse tranquilizers, and a blue-collar motel stripper (Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka) and her mom (Lynn Wanlass), who turns out to be surprisingly handy brandishing a big blade. There’s a pint-size bounty hunter (Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage) with a big machine gun, a punk-rock rapper who calls himself Pricka Bush da Werewolf (Succession’s Nicholas Braun), and a close call with a hatchet. Bullets fly, blood is spattered, someone gets shot in the eye, someone else in the foot, and a parking lot full of guys in their undies try to chase down a pickup truck.
But as crazy as it might sound, it’s all in good fun—maybe not good clean fun, but fun regardless. Some parts are laugh-out-loud comical, others subversively whimsical, and much is unexpectedly uproarious. But all the yukkery has a soft center, with messages about not judging others too harshly, about getting along, about coming together for a shared cause in adverse circumstances, about doing the best you can do in any situation, and about how all the money in the world can’t make you into a more likable person—or keep you from being held hostage by a guy in a werewolf mask.
Director Macon Blair—whose other films include Gold (2016) with Matthew McConaughey, and Green Room (2015) about a rock band running into real trouble at a skinhead club—capably juggles all the wildness, the weirdness, the wide cast of supporting players and the constantly-on-the-move, road-trippery ruckus. It’s a manic movie on the go, and you never know what’s around its next curve.
Idiots won’t be for everybody. But if you’re looking for a smaller, scrappier indie flick as a palette cleanser for big-budget IMAX blockbusters, come along for the wild ride with this unhinged “slob” comedy. It may become a new cult classic. It’s an Odyssey in its own grungy way, and on its own freaky terms.
—Neil Pond