Most critics take Idiots for what it offers: a foul-mouthed buddy road comedy in the raunchy 2000s mould, with a kidnapping plot, drugs, strippers and a gun-toting rapper. The reviews lean positive, and the praise clusters on the two leads. O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Dave Franco are credited with the chemistry that keeps the thing moving, and several reviews reach for the Coen brothers as the model for the anarchy.
The spread is wide. Two reviews find the film slack and thin, with characters who have no backstory or motive and set-ups that exist mainly for mugging. Others accept the shagginess but object to a tonal shift midway, when the teenage character turns monstrous and the comedy goes somewhere darker than it can handle; The Wrap says it never recovers its identity. /Film dissents the other way, calling it one of the year’s best comedies and singling out Mason Thames for making the laughs unsettling on purpose.
