Idiocracy

Mike Judge just can't catch the box office magic. His cult masterpiece, Office Space (1999), barely cleared $10 million at the theaters, also barely recouping the budget costs. Of course, it went on to be a home video and rental smash hit, as well as a cultural landmark in our overworked times. Judge's 2006 offering, Idiocracy, also did very little at the box office. In fact, you may not have even realized the film had a theatrical run. After disastrous test screenings, the release was tightly restricted, trickling out to just over 100 theaters, mostly in large markets. So, the meager box office draw, less than $500 thousand, was an expected disappointment. The film has since gained some small popularity on DVD, although not near as much as its big brother Office Space. Of course, it's not near as a good a movie as Office Space, so that makes sense. But the film is not bad by any means. It's an entertaining, if ultimately forgettable, futuristic farce.

In 2006, the US Army seeks recruits for a top secret human hibernation program, seeking to put humans into suspended animation for one year and successfully revive them. Recommended for the program is unassuming army librarian Joe Bauer (Luke Wilson), whose attempts to fly completely under the radar of the system had been so far successful. Joining Joe in suspension is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a whore with no family and only a vengeful pimp to miss her. Midway through the project, when funding falls through, Joe and Rita's suspension cases are misplaced, forgotten, and ultimately buried in the rubble when the army base is razed for a Fuddrucker's burger joint.

Fast forward 500 years, when a garbage avalanche uncovers Joe and Rita's suspension capsules. Reanimated into a world dumbed down through generations of selective breeding, Joe and Rita find themselves literally the smartest humans on the planet. But in 2505, being smart isn't all it's cracked up to be. The pair face ridicule, hostility, and even imprisonment in a world that is too dumb to understand what they're talking about. But when their story reaches the ears of the US president, strapping ex-wrestler and motorcycle and gun enthusiast Hector Elizando Mountain Dew Camacho, Joe is commissioned to be the new Secretary of the Interior, and charged with discovering the mysterious blight that has devastated America's crops. Can Joe come through before America's idiots tire of his fancy schmanzy intelligence? And what about rumors of a time machine to take Joe and Rita back to their own time?

There are definitely some good laughs in this film, although many of them are knee-jerk laughs at the expense of future America's idiocy, including some fairly lame fart and gay jokes. Where Judge shines is his attention to detail: every aspect of the futuristic world is rendered according to his satiric vision, down to minute details whose screentime hardly calls for such measures. Judge shows us this future bombarded by layers of intrusive advertising, pervasive to the core of human culture, dictating everything from children's and institution's names, to clothing, to architecture, to urban planning. The irony is, we laugh at such silly extremes, but such a market totalitarianism is surely not so far off if we continue on our current path.

The acting here is a mixed bag. There is very little chemistry between Wilson and Rudolph, making the half-hearted attempt at romance fall fairly flat. But Dax Shepard and Terry Crews turn in fine performances as Frito, Joe's idiotic lawyer, and President Camacho, respectively. The effects are really quite terrible, rendering futuristic monster truck death rallies mawkishly cartoonish. In fact, all of the large scale CGI effects appear just a shade above cartoon quality. Maybe this was intended as yet another layer of stupidity, but it just ends up detracting from the quality of the film.

Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 2/10
Music & mood: 5/10
Performances: 6/10

The Reverend says: 6/10