Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Idiocracy (2006)

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Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 02-01-2007, 01:18 PM:

Idiocracy (2006)

SPOILERS (Like it matters)

Idiocracy is the latest feature length film from Mike Judge, director of Office Space and creator of Beavis and Butthead.
Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) is of average intelligence.
Not too smart, but not low grade moron status either.
As part of military experiment, he and a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph)) are frozen with the intention of being unfrozen a year later.
When corruption leads to the closing of the base, the experiment is quickly forgotten.
Bauers and Rita are lost in a landfill.
Over the next 500 years, society travels down a slippery slope of mass dumbing down.
The water supply is replaced with a Gatorade-like drink called Brawndo, Congress is known as the House of Representin', and the most popular channel on television is The Violence Channel, which has a hit show known as "Ow, my balls."
The Violence Channel is also the country's main news outlet.

During a massive landfill slide, the container holding Bauers crashes into the living room of Frito (Dax Shepard).
Frito, completely oblivious to what has happened because he is too busy watching The Violence Channel, only has two reactions when Bauers starts asking him for help.
They are "Shut up, I'm watching Ow, My Balls" and "You talk like a fag".

The powers that be have required everyone to be tattooed with a bar-code so they can be scanned for easy identification, not much differently than what many fear could happen with RFID.
When Bauers skips out on paying for the medical mistreatment he receives, he is arrested and put into the system.
Frito is his lawyer.
Bauers uses his average intelligence against the far below intelligence to escape from prison, tracks down Rita, and convinces Frito to help him escape.
Frito says he can take him to a time machine, which turns out to be a small roller coaster ride.
When Bauers realizes that he is stuck there, he wins over the people, becomes president, and initiates a reversal of the dumbing down of the country.

Knowing this was from Mike Judge, I knew it could go one of two ways.
I was hoping for something more along the lines of Office Space, but what I was closer to Beavis and Butthead.
While the movie had some funny moments, it is clear that the humor is dumbed down to the level of those the movie itself is targeting.
The movie also missed the opportunity to teach a lesson of the dangers of allowing yourself to be dumbed down to the point that results in you not knowing what is going on around you.
The fact that the powers that be, whoever they really were (since the government itself was completely dumbed down, there had to be some outside force pulling the strings), were able to enslave everybody into a barcode-scan control grid could have been a testament to that.
Instead, it was just a small footnote to how stupid everyone had become.
This is, of course, to be expected from the creator of Beavis and Butthead, however after Office Space, I think the Mike Judge could have done better.

1.5 out of 5 stars

Posted by Paul Burt (Member # 3743) on 02-23-2007, 04:19 PM:

This film was dumped by the distributor with one or two obscure screenings in secondary markets. Some say it's because the film is terrible, but my guess it's because the film's concept was totally ripped off from a 1950s science fiction story by C.M. Kornbluth titled "The Marching Morons," with no royalties paid or credit given. Was Mr Kornbluth mentioned anywhere in the credits?

Posted by Edwin Sheldon (Member # 4001) on 02-28-2007, 04:05 AM:

Horrible, horrible movie. Just because the premise is accurate social commentary doesn't mean it can be saved. Judge's one and only high point was Office Space...and even that flopped.