The Shitheads

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

A delightful film about the dim-witted and the disreputable. And though its humor ultimately wanes, it compensates with a surprising measure of tenderness.

Comfort with loveable loserdom is the glue – or maybe the scotch tape – that holds together a rickety contraption careening constantly toward calamity.

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.

Blair keeps the strange comedy coming, but he also lets the film dip into moments of contemplative thought, into hardscrabble philosophy. The Shitheads simply becomes a far more interesting film — a suspenseful one, too.

A smattering of individual moments achieve the kind of madcap insanity that a movie like this needs for momentum, but “The Shitheads” is plagued by stop-and-start plotting that does more to stifle its energy than build to it.

While The Shitheads doesn’t turn completely, it never fully recovers from what ends up feeling like an out-of-place, car-into-a-brick-wall choice of a tonal crater.