Two rock-bottom drivers. One wealthy teenager bound for rehab. A simple job that goes sideways in every conceivable direction. That is the setup for Idiots, the crime comedy from director Macon Blair that has been quietly building a devoted audience since its August 20 release.
The film pairs Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. as Mark and Davis, two men whose lives have bottomed out so thoroughly that chauffeuring a rich kid to treatment looks like easy money. Their passenger is Sheridan, played by Mason Thames, and he is not the compliant cargo they were promised. What follows, per the film's own logline, is a chaotic journey of drugs, danger, and crime as the teenager derails their plans at every turn.
It is a premise that sounds like a standard-issue road movie until you look at the names attached to the margins. Peter Dinklage appears as Karl "Koko" Sandoz, a character whose name alone suggests the kind of trouble that cannot be resolved with a phone call. Kiernan Shipka plays Irina Anastas, while Lynn Wanlass takes on the role of Bodha "Baba" Anastas - a pair of names that hint at the criminal architecture surrounding the film's hapless leads. Nicholas Braun, whose full character credit reads Joe Thom Pell Aka Pricka Bush Da Werewoof, brings his particular gift for off-kilter comedy to the proceedings. And Blair himself steps in front of the camera as D.D. His Buddy, a small but telling presence in a film preoccupied with people operating well outside the law.
For Blair, Idiots continues a career defined by an affection for criminals who are neither glamorous nor especially competent. Since his breakout with Blue Ruin, the filmmaker-actor has carved out a space in American cinema for stories about desperate people making catastrophically poor decisions. Idiots appears to double down on that sensibility, trading dread for laughs while keeping the stakes uncomfortably real.
The pairing of Franco and Jackson Jr. is the film's structural center. Franco has spent much of his career playing variations on the well-meaning screwup, and Mark sounds like a natural extension of that persona. Jackson Jr., who has moved fluidly between blockbusters and smaller character work, brings a grounded presence that should contrast sharply with his co-star's flailing energy. Together they form the kind of mismatched duo that crime comedies live and die by.
Thames, meanwhile, has quietly become one of the more interesting young actors of his generation. After breaking out in The Black Phone, he has shown a willingness to take on roles that require him to be unsettling rather than merely sympathetic. Sheridan, a teenager with enough money and menace to run circles around two grown men, sounds like exactly the right next step.
The film's 100-minute runtime is worth noting. Crime comedies of this stripe often bloat past the two-hour mark, mistaking additional detours for added value. A tight hundred minutes suggests Blair and his collaborators understood that the joke works best when it does not overstay its welcome.
Reception has been modest but real. TMDb users have settled at 6.4 out of 10, with IMDb sitting at 6.2 - numbers that point toward a film with genuine pleasures and a fair share of rough edges, the sort of split that tends to follow cult-leaning titles rather than crowd-pleasers. Neither score tells the whole story, of course. Films like this tend to find their people long after the opening weekend conversation has moved on.
What Idiots seems most interested in is the collision between people who have nothing left to lose and people who have everything. Mark and Davis need the money. Sheridan has plenty of it and no interest in where he is being taken. Add a supporting cast loaded with schemers and operators, and you have a pressure cooker disguised as a road trip.
Blair has never been a filmmaker drawn to easy moralizing, and the title itself suggests a certain democratic approach to culpability. Everyone here, from the drivers to the passenger to the assorted criminals orbiting them, appears to be making choices that range from bad to catastrophic. The comedy comes from watching those choices compound.
Idiots is in theaters now.
