Editor’s Note: This film was retitled from The Shitheads to Idiots after its Sundance 2026 premiere, and this review now reflects that change.
Writer-director Macon Blair has faced many hurdles in getting his movies released. After all, it took him 2 years after its first screening in 2023 to secure a theatrical distributor for his remake of The Toxic Avenger. His latest comedy, Idiots (previously titled The Shitheads), has been in development for just under 10 years. It’s difficult to see why, as it’s perhaps Blair’s most crowd-pleasing project yet. Having premiered at Sundance 2026, Idiots feels like the sort of raunchy comedy that doesn’t get made anymore, or at least released in theaters. It’s an anarchic road trip that constructs one ridiculous scenario after another, delivering a consistent riot while also packing a surprising amount of heart through its central dirtbags.
Macon Blair’s Mean Take on the Classic Buddy Comedy
Davis (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) has just lost his coveted job at a church, thanks to his own hilarious naivety. Meanwhile, Mark (Dave Franco) finds himself floating from job to job, living in a constant high. These poor strangers find common ground when they sign up for a straightforward gig with a private service that transports troubled youth to rehab centers. Their first task is to transport Sheridan (Mason Thames), the disgraced heir to a wealthy family. As they embark on their road trip, they realize there is a lot more to Sheridan than meets the eye. He’s not your usual rich teen addict; he’s a full-on maniac who weaponizes his viral social media presence to ruin people’s lives.
Dave Franco has been on quite a hot streak, coming off the horror hit Together and the long-awaited sequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, both in 2025. Macon Blair’s Idiots continues this streak with ease. Franco fits like a glove into the “lovable idiot” archetype. Den of Thieves star O’Shea Jackson Jr. provides a great counterpoint as Davis, a righteous man who is genuinely trying to do his best and overcome his anxieties. Seeing these two unqualified bozos rile each other up, pushing every button in the book, is classic comedy.
Like every good buddy comedy worth its salt, Idiots maintains a certain bittersweet dynamic between these two. As much as they act like they hate each other, they sort of complete one another.
Mason Thames Stands Out From the Lovable Cast
Of course, it’s Mason Thames who effortlessly steals the movie. The young star is coming off his own winning streak as well, following the box-office success of his last three films: Regretting You, Black Phone 2, and the live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake (all in 2025). In Idiots, he’s a tornado of a human being. Sheridan is irreverent and shamelessly cruel toward anything and everything in his path. Thames makes this kind of destructive evil incredibly charming, though. Part of the fun is seeing what Sheridan will possibly do next!
In essence, Thames is the film’s engine, and this role fully expands audience expectations of his screen persona. Try to yelp in shock as he sinks his teeth into the neck of stripper Irina (Kiernan Shipka) after putting on the sad puppy dog act. On that note, Shipka, best known from Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Totally Killer (2023), is another surprising standout from the cast. She brings a much-needed tenderness that plays well off of Davis, especially. It would have been easy to reduce her role to the stereotypical “exotic” sex worker, but Blair and Shipka refute that.
Idiots captures our band of losers — yes, even Sheridan — with a rare amount of sincerity, wanting this group of burnouts to exit this strange, transitional era of their lives. This is a recurring narrative feature of Blair’s previous movies, and it works better than ever here.
When the Visuals Are Up to Par with the Jokes
What Macon Blair is truly gifted at is crafting elaborate, absurd scenarios and letting them play out for maximum effect. An early sequence where Mark and Davis have been drugged by Sheridan avoids the common movie pitfall of way over-exaggerating what drugs feel like. Moreover, the scenario keeps building on itself, throwing punchline after punchline until an inevitable climax that will leave your sides burning from laughing so hard. So many modern comedies have forgotten the art of telling a joke, not just including the setup and payoff, but also knowing how long to drag out the laughs for. It’s refreshing to see that one of Blair’s main concerns is executing as many comedic bits to their most satisfying extent.
What continues to set Idiots apart from the swath of recent mediocre comedies — most of which have flooded streaming services — is that it looks fantastic. Blair knows that part of getting the laugh is going all-in aesthetically, and cinematographer Guillermo Garza follows suit, capturing a visual griminess that heightens the film’s rancid misadventures. Idiots hits its stride in a downright genius late-story beat where Sheridan comes across two of his biggest fans: a militant gang leader, played by Peter Dinklage (Roofman), and his delirious stooge, a SoundCloud rapper named Pricka Bush Da Werewoof, played by Nicholas Braun (Succession). It’s a wildly funny subplot that draws more from 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre than anything else.
The Film’s Only Sin Is That We Need More Of It
Hell, the only real problem is that Idiots almost feels a bit too slight. Macon Blair’s script creates several opportunities to hit the gas and go crazy, though not all are taken advantage of, perhaps to avoid further alienating viewers. Arguably, that risk could have paid off hugely, as the parts of Idiots that blow the roof off the building are those that trust the audience to handle its uncomfortable dark humor. At the same time, some will think Idiots is a few chaotic incidents away from being beyond reapproach, given that one or two sequences are too foul to even describe in this review.
As it stands, Idiots fills a massive hole in the cinematic landscape, which is comedy for comedy’s sake. The late-night stoner comedy niche has largely gone extinct, relegated to mediocre streaming movies. Filmmaker Macon Blair proudly wears these inspirations on his sleeve, crafting a high-effort comedy that’s sincere, unpredictable, and genuinely lovable all the way through. Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long for Idiots to release as it did for The Toxic Avenger; comedies like this have been sorely missed.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Idiots premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and hits theaters on August 28!
Release Date: August 28, 2026.
Directed by Macon Blair.
Written by Macon Blair.
Produced by Macon Blair, Alex Orr, Brandon James, Nathan Klingher, Ford Corbett, Joshua Harris, & Dave Franco.
Executive Producers: Jeremy Saulnier, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, Jatin Desai, Greg Freidman, David Gendron, Ali Jazayeri, & Thomas Mann.
Main Cast: Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Peter Dinklage, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, & Macon Blair.
Cinematographer: Guillermo Garza.
Composers: Will Blair & Brooke Blair.
Editor: Dane McMaster.
Production Company: Gramercy Park Media.
Distributor: Independent Film Company (IFC).
Runtime: 100 minutes.
Rated R.
