With “Idiots,” Macon Blair returns to the dark, chaotic comedy that earned him the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for 2017’s “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.” Once again, everyday people find themselves in ridiculous situations that go off the rails. Two bumbling transport drivers (Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are tasked with delivering a spoiled wealthy teen (Mason Thames, shedding his nice guy persona) to rehab, only to find themselves at the hands of kidnappers, one of whom thinks he’s a rapping werewolf. Originally, Blair’s comedy shared its name with Steve Martin’s dog in 1979’s “The Jerk,” in which the comedian played a simple-minded goofball. Compared to this lot, Martin comes off as Einstein’s prodigy.
Jackson plays Davis, a kind-hearted Christian who gets fired from his church job for taking a group of kids to see Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.” He thought it was a movie about Jesus, but that doesn’t explain why they watched the entire film, thus exposing the little disciples to Willem Dafoe’s “dong.”
Davis gets hired by a transport service where he’s partnered with Mark (Franco), a stoner who just got fired from his job. The two screw-ups are assigned to deliver a rich, spoiled teenager named Sheridan Kimberley (Thames) to a rehab facility. What they don’t know is that Sheridan is a social media influencer with millions of followers. He’s also a sociopath who went viral for setting a homeless man on fire. Thames gets to shed his goody-two-shoes image (“How to Train Your Dragon,” “The Black Phone”) by playing a world-class jerk.
In the tradition of “Midnight Run” and “The Last Detail,” Blair’s dysfunctional road trip comedy quickly spirals out of control as the three guys take off in Mark’s beater, an old Buick, traveling across Virginia.
The teen begins manipulating the two men. He drugs Mark, who ———— himself; disgusting but hilarious. A Russian sex worker named Irina (Kiernan Shipka) enters the story; she really gets the short end of the stick. And Sheridan attempts to escape.
Irina (and her grandmother, or “Baba,” played by Lynn Wanlass) team up with Davis and Mark to ensure that Sheridan is delivered to rehab, but they encounter another snag after the teen influencer jumps on his platform to issue a $5 million reward to anyone who can rescue him, stating that he’s been abducted by “perverts.” Wait! It gets better.
Sheridan’s bogus cry for help is answered by a group of misfits who follow the teen influencer on social media, including Koko (Peter Dinklage), Crystal (Najah Bradley), and the film’s ultimate scene-stealer, Nicholas Braun (“Succession”), as a wannabe SoundCloud rapper named Pricka Bush Da Werewolf.
Filled with offbeat characters, gross-out humor, and plenty of “Yo Mamma” jokes, Macon Blair’s “Idiots” is proof that zero brain cells equal one hundred percent laughs.
(3 ½ stars)
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