'The Shitheads' Review: Dave Franco, Mason Thames, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. Go on a Dark Comedy Road Trip

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Published Feb 2, 2026, 2:29 PM EST

Ross Bonaime is the Senior Film Editor at Collider. He is a Virginia-based critic, writer, and editor who has written about all forms of entertainment for Paste Magazine, Brightest Young Things, Flickchart, The Free Lance-Star, and more. Ross graduated from George Mason University with a focus in communications and journalism and a minor in film and video studies.

Ross is a Tomatometer-approved critic, a member of the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association, and a member of the Critics Choice Association. He has loved movies ever since he saw Cinderella in the theater as a kid, he can quote 10 Things I Hate About You and Wet Hot American Summer from memory, and is fascinated by all things Georges Méliès and Charlie Chaplin.

Writer-director Macon Blair, the filmmaker behind 2017’s I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, and the recent The Toxic Avenger, probably isn’t the first name you’d think of to make a buddy road-trip comedy. His films as a director have a darker, almost nihilistic viewpoint, and it’s not exactly the vibe you expect to take on the open road with you.

But that’s what makes his latest film, The Shitheads, such a jarring, unusual ride that’s often a blast. Blair and his starring trio of Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., and Mason Thames are, as the title implies, shitheads of different types, but it’s that willingness to go in on the strangeness and darkness that makes The Shitheads a welcome surprise. It might not be the most consistent comedy, and it might go over the line one too many times, but you wouldn’t expect a Macon Blair road trip comedy to be anything but a bit of a bumpy ride.

What Is 'The Shitheads' About?

Image via Sundance

Each of the three leads of The Shitheads are, well, shitheads in their own right. Davis (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) has just been let go from his position within his church for accidentally bringing a group of students to go see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist… and still staying through the whole thing once he recognized the error of his ways. Meanwhile, Mark (Dave Franco) has been fired from his telemarketing job, which seems like it was interrupting his time spent smoking weed and taking various unknown substances, anyway.

But Mark coincidentally gets a job where Davis also works at a transport service, where their first assignment together is to bring a wild, rich teen, Sheridan Kimberley (Mason Thames), to rehab. At first, Sheridan doesn’t seem like much of a bother, but as their road trip proceeds, Davis and Mark have a hard time keeping control of the situation, which also takes them down the path of a stripper, Irina (Kiernan Shipka), a strange social-media-focused gang, led by Peter Dinklage, and a SoundCloud rapper known as Pricka Bush Da Werewoof (Nicholas Braun).

'The Shitheads' Has a Tone That Doesn't Always Work for the Story It's Telling

The Shitheads almost plays out at first like a take on Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, just with three idiots who are in over their heads. For a while, Blair’s penchant for the extreme works in how ridiculous these characters are, and their antics are quite fun, particularly watching Davis and Mark go at each other, while Sheridan plots in the background. The dynamic is well-handled, and even though it goes in some relatively dark places, it never goes overboard. But then, Blair introduces a level of violence to show just how dangerous and unhinged Sheridan truly is, and it throws off much of the rest of the film. It’s not a damning choice, but it is jarring in that it makes you have to recontextualize this story in a way that it never quite recovers from. There was a way to show Sheridan’s disregard for others that doesn’t go down this route, and it’s kind of a shame, since it’s the film’s biggest speed bump.

Blair is known for stories like this that can shift on a dime in unexpected ways, whether in his own directorial efforts or in his collaborations with Jeremy Saulnier, as Blair starred in Blue Ruin and Green Room. These are all films that play with your expectations, then throw you down a rabbit hole you didn’t see coming. That might work for a thriller, but it’s not nearly as effective in a comedy like this, especially in the way this film handles it. Again, it is surprising how well Blair’s style does work for his most overt comedy, especially in some of the film’s wilder, more ridiculous moments — like when Sheridan drugs both Davis and Sheridan at a motel — but at times, it does go over the top in ways that don’t tonally fit even the darker moments of this road trip comedy.

Dave Franco, Mason Thames, and O'Shea Jackson Jr. Make for a Fun, Wild Lead Trio

Yet making Blair's brand of comedy work as well as it does is this main trio of actors, who balance each other well throughout The Shitheads. O'Shea Jackson Jr. is a delight as the (mostly) lawful guy, trying to keep this group on the straight and narrow, but still has plenty of opportunities to show off his comedic chops. Dave Franco gets the opportunity to be deranged in the most fun ways possible as a real dumb dirtbag who's always a joy to watch. Over the last few years, with films like Together and Love Lies Bleeding, Franco has become great at going all-in and truly embracing the strangeness of oddball characters, and that's especially true here. Franco clearly has no problem getting disgusting, strange, and drugged-out (with The Studio being a prime example), and it's what makes this performance such a blast.

But maybe the biggest surprise here is Mason Thames as Sheridan, who has mostly played nice characters in The Black Phone, How to Train Your Dragon, and Regretting You, and it's great to see what he's able to do when he goes the exact opposite direction. Yes, many of the film's biggest flaws come in how the Sheridan character is handled, but that's no knock on Thames, who can handle the highs and lows with equal excellence. Sheridan is the biggest uncertainty in this cast, and even when he does awful things, Thames makes us want to believe that maybe this character isn't as bad as we might have thought.

The main characters from Bridesmaids walking down a jetway

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"Man, I don't drop character 'till I done the DVD commentary."

While the supporting cast here is strong, they mostly exist as ways to extend this trip a bit longer. Shipka, in particular, is a standout, especially when she teams up with Jackson Jr. and Franco, but once her segment of the film is done, The Shitheads mostly shrugs her off and keeps going. Similarly, Dinklage and Braun get plenty of fun moments, but they mostly exist as silly cameos and feel like an added bit of tension in a film that already seems like it's starting to wind down.

For the most part, The Shitheads is a curious attempt by Blair to turn his idiosyncratic style into a dark comedy that mostly works, but some of the choices along the way hurt this film's goal of being a comedy. The Shitheads was originally announced almost a decade ago, and since then, Blair has taken on a wide range of projects, from writing Saulnier's Hold the Dark to 2024's crime comedy Brothers. It would be interesting to see what this story would look like from Blair if he started from scratch now, as we'd see how what he's learned over the last decade would change this story. As it stands, The Shitheads is an enjoyable, dark take on the buddy-road comedy that could've maybe used a bit more finessing, but hopefully this isn't the last time we see Blair try this type of comedy.

The Shitheads premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.