The title speaks for itself.

I wanted to like “Idiots” beginning with its comical introduction and its sharply edited trailer fresh from the Sundance Film Festival. We meet two knuckleheads who have hit rock bottom, and meet when they both get a job driving a troubled rich kid to rehab. The religious Davis (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) inadvertently takes a group of religious kids to a Not Rated film (which is the equivalent of NC-17 and what used to be X), which kind of reminds me of how a school trip took kids to see “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.” And the stoner Mark (Dave Franco) loses his job and smokes his troubles away.

Now, these two characters should enter “Dumb and Dumber” and Coen Brothers territory, and a few weeks ago, I enjoyed “Nimrods,” which also had two dumb characters. One of them didn’t know which gas pump to use. So, I’m hoping “Idiots” will work, but it doesn’t and tries to throw a lot of crazy situations at us, as if we’re supposed to be starving for manic behaviors and gross-out gags.

The kid they’re supposed to drive is a young social media prankster named Sheridan (Mason Thames, who as just in “Nimrods”)-not Johnson Wen. They say he set a homeless man on fire, while in his defense, he was doing him a favor by preventing him from working. In their motel room, Davis hires a Russian stripper (Kiernan Shipka) to help arouse Sheridan before he ends up in a place where he can’t have sex. But because he roofies the stoner, he soils himself uncontrollably out of his pants and onto the bed, while the young man escapes with her money.

Later on his social media account, he lies to his followers that Davis and Mark are perverts kidnapping him. And that’s why a group of die hard fans (Peter Dinklage, Nicholas Braun, and Melanie Loren) get their guns and bad hairstyles out to kidnap Davis and Mark and take them into the woods with bags on their heads. And then, the kid has to learn the hard way about a prank like this.

“Idiots” was directed by Macon Blair, whose last directing job was “The Toxic Avenger,” which had a better attitude toward itself. And by a strange coincidence, it also featured Dinklage as the title hero. Blair’s latest entry has Franco and Jackson, Jr. both delivering comical and energetic performances, as they struggle to adapt to whatever the script throws at them. The comical introduction promises us that. And I did enjoy the rap video that the Braun character does and shows to the boy, because of the attitude and goofiness within. I can almost imagine if Pete Davidson and Andy Samberg had a baby, and out came him. But the mean-spirited attitude threatens to upstage their characters, and relies on the dangers of social media and indulgence to send them off course.

I can laugh at a comedy that likes to pick on people or pressure them, as long as they’re handled with versatility (after all “The Hangover” knew how to taser the Wolf Pack, and “The Simpsons” and “South Park” are adult animated shows that know who the targets are). Here, their adventure feels like an unapologetic social media prank that makes us feel sorry for Sheridan. It’s all too cynical and perfunctory to be wildly comical. “Idiots” is rated R, not “Not Rated,” and if it was it’s still the same deal, then I don’t know what is. And I’m telling that to Davis.