“I can see how this has made your job a bit more difficult,” Mark (Dave Franco) tells a motel manager in “The Shitheads,” standing near the front door of a room with equal parts blood, puke and excrement, at least some of which he’s responsible for. This is even messier than one could predict when he’s paired with Davis (O’Shea Jackson) to transport a wayward trust fund baby named Sheridan (Mason Thames) to a rehab center when neither are hired for their expertise and Davis lost the van that he was expected to bring as part of his qualification for the gig when accidentally he used it to take a group of kids to an adult film on the clock at his other job for a church. But no matter how bad you think it’s going to get in Macon Blair’s rollicking third feature as a director, it somehow manages to get that much worse — or much better if you’re looking to be entertained.
Perhaps a little less audacious than its title might suggest but wonderfully amusing nonetheless, the “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore” director once again asks how average people might behave if caught up in a world of crime when neither Mark and Davis have any business enforcing any rules when they’re so prone to breaking them themselves yet need the cash from one of the few low-rent operations willing to hire them. Even before meeting the malignant Sheridan, you know they’re overmatched when they roll up in a beat-up Buick to the mansion he lives in, owing to his father making a fortune in toothpaste and his exploits as a failson all over social media, much of it recorded by himself for his TikTok. Mark twists his ankle just trying to get him into the car and it doesn’t get any easier from there when a flat tire forces the trio to spend the night at a motel and Sheridan plots an escape.
Attempts to rein Sheridan in essentially becomes a clothesline for all the eccentric characters and well-seasoned country-fried setpieces Blair has a gift for creating – where else would you see a Grocery Retailers’ convention’s worth of shirtless and overweight 50- and 60-year-olds become an obstacle in a car chase? But “The Shitheads” has an unexpected poignance that’s often true as well of the director’s work when Mark and Davis’ futile efforts to finish the job reflects reaching for righteousness in a world where being the best you can doesn’t seem to be rewarded and wealth can be so extraordinary now that there are no consequences for bad behavior, as they see with Sheridan, who faces no worse than the Fresh Path rehab center where he’ll be coddled after unspeakable debauchery. The film’s best running gag involves Sheridan simply getting in Mark’s head with a strange glance or pronunciation of a word or phrase and as a whole, the film benefits from a similar strain of weirdness that you just can’t put your finger on as a pursuit of Sheridan involves Kiernan Shipka as Irina, an Eastern European exotic dancer who harbors dreams of a singing career, and Nicolas Braun as the juggalo Bricklebush the Werewolf, who feels there’s a literal component to his stage name.
“The Shitheads” can feel slightly uneven at times as Mark and Davis careen from one situation to another and Blair seems to count on momentum alone to connect the dots, but it is constantly diverting and held together by a number of great multifaceted performances, especially from Jackson as an open-hearted ne’er do well that draws on the vulnerability and shape comic instincts he first revealed in “Ingrid Goes West,” and Franco, who is completely game to do a variety of embarrassingly rancid things as Mark and turns the idea he could grow a sense of shame about them into something genuinely touching. Brooke Blair and Will Blair supply a chameleonic percussive score that compliments the film’s wild exploits well and overall, it’s a ride to remember despite a few bumps in the road.
“The Shitheads” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City on January 28th at 9:30 pm at the Eccles Theatre, January 30th at 11:55 pm at the Library Center Theatre and February 1st at the Yarrow Theatre.