Idiots (2026) Review: This Is NOT the Comedy the Trailer Is Selling

Idiots looks like it's going to be a chaotic road-trip comedy.

Dave Franco. O'Shea Jackson Jr. A couple of completely unqualified guys get hired to transport a troubled rich kid to rehab. Things go wrong. Everybody does stupid stuff.

You know the movie.

Except Idiots isn't really that movie.

What starts with the DNA of a dumb buddy comedy slowly reveals itself as something much darker, rawer, and more uncomfortable.

By the time it was over, I wasn't thinking about 21 Jump Street or Neighbors.

I was thinking about Very Bad Things and Hard Eight.

And that's a very different movie.

What Is Idiots About?

Written and directed by Macon Blair, Idiots follows Mark and Davis, played by Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr., two wildly underqualified drivers hired to transport a wealthy, troubled teenager named Sheridan to a rehab facility.

Mason Thames plays Sheridan, with a supporting cast that includes Kiernan Shipka, Peter Dinklage, and Nicholas Braun.

It sounds like the setup for a broad comedy.

Put three incompatible people in a vehicle, send them on a road trip, introduce increasingly ridiculous obstacles, and let everything go to hell.

And things definitely go to hell.

Just not necessarily in the way you're expecting.

Idiots Gets Dark

The biggest surprise about Idiots is its tone.

This is a dark movie.

Underneath the comedy is something that feels much closer to an independent drama from the 1990s—a movie interested in damaged people making terrible decisions and then forcing us to sit there while those decisions get worse.

There's a rawness to it.

There's also an emotional flatline running underneath the whole thing that makes even the funny moments feel a little dangerous.

I kept thinking:

This is a '90s talkie indie hiding inside a comedy.

That's what makes Idiots interesting.

The marketing can sell you Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. getting into trouble, but the movie itself has other plans.

Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. Make the Setup Work

Dave Franco is almost perfectly designed for this kind of premise.

We've seen him navigate comedy and chaos in movies like 21 Jump Street, Neighbors, and Now You See Me. You understand immediately why he belongs in this movie.

O'Shea Jackson Jr. brings a different energy.

After Straight Outta Compton, Long Shot, and the gloriously ridiculous Cocaine Bear, he's become one of those actors who can move between grounded material and completely insane situations without making the transition feel strange.

Together, Franco and Jackson give Idiots the buddy-movie foundation it needs.

That's important because the movie eventually starts pulling that foundation out from underneath you.

Don't Expect a Traditional Comedy

This is where Idiots may divide audiences.

If you're expecting nonstop jokes and a conventional road-trip comedy, the movie's darker instincts could throw you.

But that's also what I liked about it.

Idiots doesn't stay comfortable.

It becomes disturbing.

It becomes bleak.

And instead of constantly reminding you that everything is supposed to be funny, it sometimes just lets the ugliness of the situation sit there.

That's why Very Bad Things feels like such a natural comparison.

That movie also starts with characters entering a situation that should be fun before bad decisions transform everything into something increasingly nasty.

There's some Hard Eight in here too—the feeling of watching flawed people move through a world where everyone seems to be carrying something around with them.

Idiots isn't necessarily copying either movie.

It just feels like it belongs to that older tradition of dark American indie filmmaking.

The Supporting Cast Is Loaded

Then you look at the supporting cast.

Kiernan Shipka already has plenty of experience living in darker material thanks to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Swimming with Sharks.

And then you've got Peter Dinklage and Nicholas Braun showing up in supporting roles.

The cast alone makes Idiots look like a bigger, more conventional comedy than the movie ultimately feels like.

Instead, this is a strange little dark movie wearing mainstream comedy clothes.

The Flatline of the Summer

If I had to describe Idiots in one phrase?

The alt-emo flatline of the summer.

It's funny until it isn't.

It's a road movie until it becomes something uglier.

It's sold like a comedy but increasingly behaves like a drama.

And there's something refreshingly strange about seeing a movie willing to make that turn.

In an era when a lot of movies seem terrified of confusing the audience about what genre they're watching, Idiots seems perfectly comfortable letting you wonder:

Wait...wasn't this supposed to be funny?

Exactly.

Johnny Spoiler's Idiots Review

Idiots isn't the breezy Dave Franco comedy you might be expecting.

It's raw, dark, uncomfortable, and occasionally disturbing, with the spirit of a '90s indie drama hiding beneath its modern road-comedy setup. That's ultimately what makes it worth talking about.

If movies like Very Bad Things and Hard Eight are your particular flavor of cinematic misery, this deserves a spot on your radar.

Just don't walk into the theater expecting two hours of 21 Jump Street.

Idiots arrives in U.S. theaters August 28, 2026.

And for more movie reviews, cult classics, horror reactions, and movies you probably forgot existed, catch Johnny Spoiler on Binge-Watchers Podcast.

(img used with permisson, Pixel Scene Media)