Credits
Directed by Mike Judge
Source Fox DVD
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Posted on 12 January 2007
Read 2234 times
Comments 13
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Reviews
Idiocracy / USA / 2006
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy takes place some five hundred years in the future. Trash is everywhere—mountains of it. Brands are dominant, even clothing is smothered in a variety of logos and issued out of boxes like disposable Kleenex. The president is a former wrestler and wears the presidential seal in the form of a rather unwieldy plaque that hangs around his neck (as does his cabinet). Prices have certainly inflated – a side of fries costs around two thousand dollars – but the scenario is not one of impoverishment. It is filthy and uncultured, to be sure, but not impoverished.
It is also not dystopian, which is significant as film often houses more rotundly ominous visions of the future. Despite the fact that the mean IQ has plummeted – speech is now delivered in incomplete sentences punctuated by guttural inflections – people are generally peaceful. There are guns, but what violence this scenario retains is prescribed as entertainment—at a gladiator-like monster truck rally, or in Ow! My Balls! , the most popular show on television. What fissured international relations this future has retained is not apparent. At least, the headline on the latest Naked Chicks & World Report (“Shit Sucks!”) seems to indicate a general malaise and not the latest scuffles in international diplomacy.
There is, however, an implicit argument to Judge’s future. Leisure has dissolved any incentive in maintenance, and slogans have become commandments. People are even named after the products they buy. Brawndo (the “Thirst Mutilator”) is a sports energy drink whose major competitor was water. Thusly, they bought out water. The stuff now pumps through irrigation systems, and through water fountains. Crops everywhere die. In a rather unnerving instance, a mother wields a bottle filled with Brawndo toward the lips of her infant child as he frantically swings his arms to remove the undesired nipple from his lips. This child is equivalent to every living person on earth, defenseless in the face of the corporations that malnourish his planet.
The only option for redemption is Joe Bowers, a military private from the present renowned for his average physique and average demeanor—he is a quantifiable mean on every measure of human physicality or intelligence. He is enlisted to participate in a government hibernation program, and scheduled to emerge from a chemical-induced sleep exactly one year in the future. Instead, he sleeps for five centuries, and rubs the crust out of his eyes to find the redundant charms of Ow! My Balls! and the landslide of garbage that has enabled his awakening.
Whereas other futures hinge upon some concept of correction, Idiocracy’s is distinguished for its indifference. There may be a conflict, but it is not an urgent concern to anyone. Joe, having been instated on the presidential cabinet for gaining an uncommonly high score on an IQ test, announces his plan for improvement, which is to simply replace Brawndo with water in irrigation systems. There are no immediate results, millions of Brawndo employees lose their jobs, and the populace demands to punish him at a monster truck rally. Excitement distinguishes these people, not patience. Of course, Joe’s simple motives are honorable if not initially welcomed, and he is too good-natured a protagonist in too good-natured a film to be punished. But Idiocracy’s conclusion is of little to criticize, as its true ingenuity is its concept.
There is an inherent irony in most any description of the film, in voices that come off as “pompous and faggy” as Joe’s to his Neanderthaloid companions. It is flawed – knowledge of Judge’s difficulty in producing it amplifies some of the later, more ill-fit scenes – but admirable. Idiocracy’s utter lack of promotion (it was released in exactly twenty-five US cities with only a poster in tow) is now something of a minor legend, and it remains perplexing given the film’s obvious charms. It lies, finally, an infant left at your doorstep, crying for embracement.
Rumsey Taylor | © 2007 notcoming.com
dave / 12 January 2007 / 9:55 AM / URL
I’m almost sure it was released in exactly 6 American cities (+ 1 Canadian): Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and (Judge’s hometown of) Austin. Unless I missed a later wider limited release? It definitely never came out in New York; I had to fly to Austin to see it.
Rumsey / 12 January 2007 / 10:31 AM / URL
Correct you are, Dave, according to Wikipedia’s claim: seven cities / 125 theaters. I probably misread the latter.
dave / 12 January 2007 / 10:40 AM / URL
Its laughs are dumb laughs made safe for smart audiences, with condescention built in. and this plays on the “I’m better than everyone else” syndrome (80% of people think they are better than average drivers), so everyone gets to be smarter than the characters here. it’s a conceit that makes everyone in the film lovably obnoxious – including/especially Private Bowers. certainly one of my favorite modern comedies.
CK Dexter / 12 January 2007 / 2:50 PM / URL
I didn’t really get the impression that the audience is supposed to feel smarter than the characters. I got the impression that the movie was an exagerrated portrait of the present, a funhouse mirror, and that the “glimpse at our grim potential future” angle was just a way of softening the blow. I mean, I really, really, winced with recognition frame after frame: that’s us, that’s our world. Which is quite striking, when the degree of exagerration is so ridiculously silly and over-the-top. Even the awkwardly set up joke of having the scientifically determined perfectly average person appear as a genius from the point of view of the idiocrats seems to reiterate the Socratic point: we’re all morons, even if some of us are bright enough to recognize it.
Perhaps the most interesting (and questionable) aspect of this odd and uneven movie is the explicit fatalism it expresses about idiocy: the human species’ lack of predators produces an evolutionarily inevitable regression in intelligence. The overall end feeling it leaves you with is Jon Stewart syndrome: what idiocy! But hey, what can you do?
tom / 13 January 2007 / 3:30 AM / URL
I watched this a few days ago as well, and I must admit I wasn’t surprised it didn’t get a wide release. Entertaining enough, but not particularly funny or interesting. And I found it ironic that a film which bemoans the state of mean IQs feels it requires a near- constant voiceover to make sure we understand exactly what’s going on at all times.
But the film’s most disturbing aspect is it’s unashamedly fascist message, openly calling for sterilisation of the stupid, which in this case seems to mean the poor- Judge’s ‘dumb’ culture is actually American working class culture, treated so lovingly in King Of The Hill but viciously disparaged here.
Walmarthon / 19 January 2007 / 7:23 AM
Too bad, good movie! Shit sucks!
obviouslycryptofascist / 1 February 2007 / 5:16 AM
Unashamedly fascist? I must have missed the part where Judge calls for sterilization of the stupid. You might be so kind as to quote the relevant lines for the rest of us. All judge did was illustrate the effects of a dysgenic differential birthrate.
I guess I must be fascist to want humanity to have enough collective intelligence in the future to solve our problems and be able to escape the confines of the earth.
Lighten up… / 5 February 2007 / 9:35 AM
Guys, this was a comedy… did anyone enjoy it as much as I did?!
It seems that every review I read of this film is searching for an “-ism” we can assign to it.
I know Mike Judge is a smart guy who could be trying to make a grand social statement, but it is very obvious that he also intended to cause a serious laugh-fest.
I laughed so hard I was crying, and my wife thought it was stupid. But that of course, was sort of the point. Did you guys read this much into movies like “Airplane”, or “Anchor Man”?
Was Will Ferrell’s newsman character a pointed stab at the news media, meant to warn us of future moron’s like Dan Rather who will be shaping public opinion to the detriment of society? No!! It was just some “good-ole stupid” for the sake of laughter!
I don’t usually read film reviews, but since this was literally one of the funniest movies I have ever seen in my life, I though I would investigate how I had never heard of it until now. It doesn’t add up that a company such as Fox would be concerned with offending people, does it? None of this makes much sense to me but, maybe I’m just one of the people that isn’t supposed to re-produce! : )
rumsey / 26 February 2007 / 5:40 PM / URL
Idiocratic Design
wo-man / 7 March 2007 / 8:27 AM
I am a woman and I laughed my butt off watching this movie. It’s not just a guy thing. I saw it a month ago and I still find myself laughing out loud thinking about scenes or lines in the movie. “It’s got elec-tro-lytes” is one of my favorites. Today I keep thinking about the scene in the emergency room. How true to life today is that? It is a fun house mirror look at current society. On a deeper level I found it depressing. But I laugh through the tears!
Richard / 21 September 2007 / 10:40 PM
This film is hysterically funny, but in a sense, all too true.
The message this film sends is that intelligent people should reproduce. The stupid SHOULD be sterilized.
leo / 22 September 2007 / 9:33 AM / URL
Hell, let’s just exterminate them while we’re at it.
Steve Grossman / 12 May 2008 / 11:41 PM
I thought it hilarious, and certainly consistent with the utterly dark view expressed in B$B. Unlike a poster above, I would call this a dystopia, and one of the bleakest ever.