Newsletter
Macon Blair’s Follow-up to Toxic Avenger Never Quite Works
Lifestyle

Macon Blair’s Follow-up to Toxic Avenger Never Quite Works

4 Mins Read

PLOT: Two misfits (Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are hired to drop off a wealthy teenager (Mason Thames) at rehab, only to run into many bumps in the road along the way.

REVIEW: Macon Blair is a highly unique talent. Initially coming into the indie landscape via his collaborations with Jeremy Saulnier (he starred in his films Blue Ruin and Green Room, and wrote Hold the Dark), he’s also carved out a place as a writer-director with his 2017 film, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, an early Netflix movie (and Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance). He’s back in the indie sphere after directing Legendary’s The Toxic Avenger reboot with a movie that, initially, seems like it might play out as a Cheech & Chong–style stoner comedy, but ends up being something much darker as it plays out.

Dave Franco plays a role that can’t help but channel his brother James’ turn in Pineapple Express, as a drugged-up bozo who, unable to find any other work, takes a terrible gig transporting people to rehab. His colleague is the somewhat more together Davis (played by O’Shea Jackson Jr.), who, while naïve, at least somewhat cares about his duties—only for his patience to be deeply tested by Mason Thames’ Sheridan.

Thames has been rising as a teen heartthrob thanks to The Black Phone movies and How to Train Your Dragon, but he takes a detour into much darker territory as the sociopathic Sheridan. He’s a rich teen who’s being taken to a wealthy person’s rehab, but his position in society makes the movie’s premise a bit hard to swallow. We quickly learn that Sheridan’s crimes were severe, and that his billionaire parents did whatever they could to keep him out of jail, but in this case, why would his custody be left to a low-rent transport agency that hires our two titular shitheads?

It’s one of several lapses in logic and detours in tone that leave Blair’s film feeling like it hasn’t been all that well thought out. There are a few really funny moments sprinkled in, but it’s wildly inconsistent from scene to scene, especially as far as our heroes go. In the first scene, Jackson’s Davis is taken to task by his pastor for taking a teen group to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist in theaters, making it seem like he’s a lovable doofus, but for the rest of the film he’s portrayed as mostly intelligent. By contrast, Franco’s Mark is more consistently dumb, but he feels like more of a caricature than a person we should have empathy for, and the movie seems to want us to have some investment in him.

The Shitheads also goes into very dark territory, with Kiernan Shipka entering the film as a stripper whose violent encounter with Sheridan tips the movie into another genre, as he’s revealed to be evil rather than merely troubled. Yet we’re also supposed to have some investment in his well-being as the movie goes way off the rails in the last third, when the trio runs afoul of a heavily armed gang whose members include a jacked Peter Dinklage and Succession’s Nicholas Braun sporting Coolio’s hairstyle from 1995.

Simply put, The Shitheads is all over the place, being a stoner comedy one moment and a violent thriller the next. Blair did something similar in his previous I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, but he had stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood to ground it. He doesn’t have the same luck in The Shitheads. Both Franco and Jackson are good (and Thames makes for a convincing sociopath), but they come off as caricatures rather than real people, and that keeps Blair’s film from feeling as well thought out as his previous work.

While some may appreciate The Shitheads for its big tonal swings, as a movie it feels consistently unsatisfying, even if it undeniably has its moments. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s a frustrating one in how it comes “close” to working at times but never quite comes together as a whole.

Share.

Related Articles