IFCThe stoner buddy comedy is an American institution at this point. Cheech and Chong, Harold and Kumar, Pineapple Express, even the recent Kristen Stewart/Alia Shawkat movie The Wrong Girls — get two friends high, send them on an adventure, and laughs will surely ensue. Idiots (originally titled The Shitheads) is kind of one of these movies. The style of humor is the same, for sure. But only one of these guys is a stoner. And they’re not exactly friends, either. No, Mark (Dave Franco) and Davis (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) are colleagues — and even that’s a generous word, given the makeshift nature of their employment. Idiots sets up both of them by showing each of them getting fired from separate jobs (Davis because he took a church group to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist), then brings them together for a tenuous gig escorting troubled teens to rehab in Mark’s beat-up sedan. Why have these goofballs been entrusted with this sensitive task without any training or even a background check? Don’t worry about it. IFCAs an actor, Franco has worked in a number of genres. But he’s especially appealing in the goofy-burnout mode he’s playing with here. Jackson is also likable as the relatively responsible Davis, whose Christian faith occupies an interesting space in the narrative. It’s not what makes him one of the titular Idiots; far from it. But his belief in being kind and respectful to everyone he meets also makes him a mark for grifters, petty criminals, and entitled, manipulative brats. Compared to other action-comedy hybrids of its type, Idiots is quite thoughtful in this way. Our heroes are losers because they make dumb decisions, to be sure. But they’re also victims of a system that allows the rich to get away with anything while the poor are left to clean up their messes — quite literally, in some cases. But while these themes give Idiots some commendable depth, the character that writer-director Macon Blair (who also appears in a small role as Mark’s drug dealer) introduces to make this point is also the movie’s undoing.IFCThe story starts to unravel with the introduction of Sheridan Kimberley (Mason Thames), a rich kid who’s being sent to a therapeutic facility for adolescents as part of his probation. Blair plays coy with revealing what, exactly, Sheridan is going to rehab for. But eventually, the plot needs something to keep it going, and we learn that Sheridan is a budding psychopath whose wealthy family arranged to keep him out of prison after he was charged with setting an unhoused person on fire. Suddenly, the stakes have changed — and not in a way that makes sense for the low-rent, low-stakes world that our characters are living in. Some twists involving Sheridan’s fame as a social-media influencer raise more questions, the most pressing of which remains: Why are these guys doing this job? Are they being set up by Sheridan to take the fall when he inevitably escapes from their custody? Do his parents (or, more specifically, their attorney) care so little for this kid that they’ve booked the cheapest possible method for transporting him as far away from them as possible? And if they don’t care, surely a judge might have opinions on who’s supervising this potential flight risk? All of this is brushed aside, to the extent that it’s considered at all. And while it’s true that picking apart the details is one of the most pedantic forms of engaging with a film, the irksome inconsistencies only escalate as the story goes on. IFCIf you can put those aside, however, there are some fun times to be had on this road trip from hell. Kiernan Shipka is a highlight as a Russian sex worker who joins the hunt for Sheridan when he tries to rob her of the $200 cash she earned the night before, and Peter Dinklage appears in a small role as a bumbling criminal whose attempts to ransom the kid for $5 million in cash don’t go as planned. But the most memorable cameo comes from Nosferatu star Nicholas Hoult, who’s barely recognizable as a Soundcloud rapper with gold fangs and a Coolio hairdo who goes by the name Pricka Bush Da Werewoof. Dinklage also starred in Blair’s remake of The Toxic Avenger, and Idiots starts to resemble that film more and more as the story gets more chaotic. The two titles definitely share a sense of humor, as well as Blair’s ability to introduce serious themes into unserious movies without being too didactic about it. But the blending of bloodshed and stupidity isn’t quite as successful here, mostly because the plot is half baked — unlike Mark, who’s fully baked the entire time.From Independent Film Company, Idiots is playing in limited theaters now.