Dave Franco has described Macon Blair’s road “comedy” The Shitheads as “The Last Detail with hard drugs”. Maybe if that were truly the direction Blair had gone, then this would’ve been a much more successful Film. But, similar to the director’s last trip to Sundance with I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, the tone bounces unsteadily from broad humor to something more considered, with little rhyme or reason, and never pushes the envelope as far as it could go.
It’s entirely possible that Blair imagined one kind of movie, but ended up making something else entirely different. For instance, the film begins with O’Shea Jackson Jr. as Davis, a complete moron who is getting fired from his job driving around Bible school kids. Why? Because he took them to a porno, because he’s an idiot who didn’t realize it was a porno, but when he did he let the kids stay and watch. This presents Davis as the perfect kind of dopey character for a Pineapple Express-style stoner comedy.
Franco is another loser, Mark, who wastes his time at his telemarketing job by getting high, drunk, and watching videos of homeless people fighting in the streets. When he gets fired, he’s indignant about it. “This is my job!!”, he shouts, before angrily knocking everything off his boss’s desk, acting like a baby. Childish antics are Mark’s default way of life.
These clowns come together when they are hired to transport a spoiled, Internet-famous rich kid, Sheridan, played by Mason Thames (who is everywhere lately), to a rehab facility. Little do Mark and Davis know that Sheridan is a total psycho, and he’s going to make this journey a drug-fueled nightmare.
It’s easy to see why so many stars were attracted to The Shitheads. At times, Blair’s script can be explosive and wildly funny, the kind of unpredictable spree comedy they really don’t make anymore. Ironically, Dave’s brother James Franco was among the last big stars to lead those films when Hollywood made them. But too often, the film doesn’t know where it’s going or how it wants us to feel. For every laugh-out-loud hilarious gross-out gag, like when explosive diarrhea rockets out of Mark’s shorts after being drugged by Sheridan, there are more that ask us to take them seriously, which is very hard to do. It gets tougher the more we learn about the terrible things Sheridan has done, which are pretty unforgivable. Davis isn’t so much an idiot as a big-hearted screw-up, and Mark…well, he’s just kind of pathetic and delusional. These aren’t characters you want to laugh at, but nor does the film do enough to make us sympathize with them, either.
Blair finds moments of inspiration, though, especially in the supporting cast. Kiernan Shipka shines as a down-on-her-luck stripper who gets screwed over by Sheridan, and finds an unlikely kinship with his chauffeurs. There’s the hint of something romantic between her and Davis that is kind of sweet, and that I wish Blair had followed up on more. Also, Peter Dinklage, who has worked with Blair multiple times including on The Toxic Avenger, is a riot as a face-painted kidnapper, with Nicholas Braun as his street thug sidekick. They capture the unhinged energy that should’ve been the standard for The Shitheads, rather than a pit stop.
