Directed By Macon Blair

Starring – Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Mason Thames

The Plot – Two rock-bottom drivers (Franco, Jackson Jr) transport a wealthy teen (Thames) to rehab, but their simple job spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs, danger, and crime as their passenger derails their plans.

Rated R for pervasive language, drug content, some violence/bloody images and sexual material.

IDIOTS | Official Trailer | Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames | Independent Film Company

POSITIVES

Pushed by cryptically contained trailers offering just enough clues into the eccentric personalities of its characters without deliberately spoiling structural details, Idiots is very much a film that lives and dies by the air of its intended ambiguity, generating enough meaningfully effective components along the way to cater exclusively to cinematic stoners, all the while feeling polarized by a singular word title that nails everything about this movie’s execution, for better or worse. On the beneficial side of my experience, despite the overly familiar concept of feeling like another buddy road trip, the film legitimately unloads some ambitiously unforeseen surprises that constantly kept me guessing throughout the extent of its exploration, particularly the overarching mystery in motive surrounding Thames’ forthcoming rehabilitation, which helps to take the script down some pretty dark and hefty avenues of exploration, with regards to upper class privilege, and how social media celebritizes the mental illnesses of those deemed untouchable by society’s standards. This might sound like a lot of substance for the script to chew on, but it’s backed by some legitimately shocking moments in the periodic stops of this trio, which help to surmise a couple of solidly effective laughs, even if the material is the most juvenile brand of gross-out gags and shock humor, as artistically conceived. This seems par for the course for Macon Blair, who in the feature length follow up to The Toxic Avenger, appraises a lot of drug-induced depravity and logically extinguished stupidity to his characterization, that makes anything seem possible to introduce chaos to what’s transpiring, but beyond that a game of wills between the captors and their prey, that is a lot of fun to experience, even if my investment to these characters never elevated past my initial exchanges with them. Blair’s comedic material might certainly vary in effectiveness between respective audiences, but his experimental artistry in framing some elaborately ambitious shots are undoubtedly his biggest advantage in the director’s chair, featuring a seemingly limitless abundance of meticulous camera placements that appraise so much meaningful insight into the emotions and incoherent state of his under-the-influence characters. Such an example pertains to one scene where Thames is manipulating Franco while the latter is consumed with illegal drugs, and Blair and cinematographer Guillermo Garza extensively iron out the paranoia and surreal state of being conditionally induced, with contorted motions and special effects visuals that distort the likenesses of those attempting to interact with Franco. In addition to some presentational qualities for Blair’s direction, he’s also met halfway with commendable performances from Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr, and especially Mason Thames, who eats up every moment psychologically while playing a stone-cold adversarial terror to those unfortunately entrusted with transporting him. Thames’ duplicates all of the spoiled sensibilities of an internet-famous rich kid, but with a corrosively amusing edginess underlining that legitimately makes him dangerous in his exacting selfishness, where he’s not only able to take advantage of the dim-witted duo with extensively elaborate plans of punishment, but also weaponize much of his dependably radiant charisma to paint a false sense of disarming security for those its aimed at. While Thames is giving the most meaningful performance in the film, most of the movie’s focus centers around Franco and Jackson, whose cantankerous chemistry for endless butting-heads and battered bickering certainly inscribes a misplaced confidence from the audience that makes them feel incapable of even the smallest tasks, but beyond that heavy lifting in the enacted emotionality of each, which helps to override some of the limitations in development that the script is always lacking. Franco is certainly having the time of his life in his experienced element here, binging heavily on manic-heavy intensity and conditional lucidness, that brings authenticity to his desperate portrayal, and Jackson, while slightly miscast in a thankless role that offers him very little stand-out value in contrast to Franco or Thames, does appraise empathetic morality in the broken spirit and helpless hopelessness that he bestows upon every conflict, offering Jackson enough endearing honesty to conjure a refreshing change of pace from the depths of depravity that the movie feels preoccupied with. If this isn’t enough, there’s enough memorable cameos from Kiernan Shipka as a no-nonsense Ukrainian escort, as well as Peter Dinklage as the lead of a group of wannabe gangsters tasked with Thames revolting rescue.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, for everything that Idiots materializes in stylistic impulses or stimulating performances, it more than lacks in a lazily lambasted screenplay that continuously lets it down at every turn, leading to a frustratingly minimalized experience that fails to live up to the magnitude of the talent assembled for the occasion. For starters, the laughs misfire quite frequently with either unsubtle material that spell out the punchlines long before they’re delivered, or other gags that rely on the aggressiveness of the performances to sell them, rather than the creativeness of the pen, and considering the comedy fires most consistently during an opening act where the most long-term focus is paid to intended landing spots, it leaves the rest of the film feeling blandly unrealized, ailing Blair with a lot of the same comedic durability and limitations that plagued The Toxic Avenger to such a minimally niche audience. The script also unloads limitless contrivances in the extent of its sequencing and resolutions, which makes every motive or surmising conflict difficult to competently follow at eye level. This is where the script relies overbearingly on the idiocy of its protagonists to fill glaringly evident plot holes, such as those involving an easy escape for Thames out of a bathroom window, without anyone guarding the room, or Franco and Jackson accepting an obviously spiked drink from Thames, that is presented to them already open, and while incompetence only goes so far, the reality is that the lack of awareness from these characters makes them even more difficult to effectively invest in, especially with their thin and flimsy outlines already lacking conviction from Blair as a screenwriter. Perhaps it’s an unforeseen aspect of individualized arcs that aren’t pursued with any semblance of commitment, as Franco’s drug parallel to Thames, as well as Jackson’s road to moral enlightenment aren’t utilized in ways that make them feel integral to the dimensionality of the script, in turn leaving very little redeemable about these shallow characters, especially with the aforementioned comedic material misfiring their appeal on an endearing level. In fact, this level of aimlessness also persists in the air of the intended narrative, where after the soaring heights of a legitimately enticing opening act, the rest of the plot feels disorganized and frankly amateur, where the meandered sequencing of the second half mentally makes the argument for this being a flimsy idea with little to follow it up, and with the road trip subgenre already inflated with no shortage of memorable entries, Idiots feels like one for the forgettable pile, as a result of the lack of framed focus that isn’t realized with any semblance of consistency or long-term commitment. Beyond this, the film gets really ugly with some jarring tonal shifts during the second half, that not only absolve Blair of even attempting any semblance of comedic levity, but also leaves this feeling like an action thriller instead of the buddy road trip movie that it was initially sold as. This isn’t necessarily a problem if the newfound direction finds urgency or tension to where it’s creatively directing, however because much of the movie’s momentum grinds to a screeching halt once the leading trio are separated, with their mission egregiously convoluted, it leaves their initialized mission feeling a bit displaced with what follows, especially once it introduces a supporting character alongside Dinklage, who is a comedy and charisma vacuum to anyone and anything that accommodates him. To be completely honest, I’m a big fan of Nicholas Braun, between memorable turns in The Sheep Detective, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and Splitsville, but here the rabid intensity and grating personality that he conjures to character intercepts the material with hijacking emphasis, leaving little in the way of subtlety and nuance that makes the portrayal feel like the worst kind of impression, rather than an acting embodiment.

OVERALL
Idiots is a sloppily conceived and creatively contrived buddy road trip comedy, whose depleting material loses its consistency after a promising opening act, leaving this an uninspired and unambitious stepchild of Dumb and Dumber, in every measurable category. While the film’s navigational journey stays inside of the lanes with unflinching performances from its decorated trio, a strangely bewildering tonal shift into the movie’s sternly serious second half eventually strands it in the middle of nowhere, cementing a dim-wittedly dizzying excursion that speeds to a dead end.

My Grade: 5.8 or C-