IDIOTS RULE

Mike Judge’s IDIOCRACY offers a dystopian vision of the dumbing down of America
Review by Garrett Peck

This wonderfully scathing new social satire from Mike Judge, creator of BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD and KING OF THE HILL, will have whisked in and out of theaters with barely a notice well before you read this review. The theater where I saw it offered only one showing at 2:30 p.m., and there was only one other patron in the auditorium with me. Why is this, you may ask? Quite simply, because Twentieth Century Fox gave it only a perfunctory release with no press screenings or other publicity. Why would they do this to a filmmaker who has had several big successes on TV and a cult-favorite live action film with OFFICE SPACE? Most likely because its satirical barbs hit too close to home with the giant corporations it lambastes. Indeed, this film even goes after the parent company of its own studio by making Fox News the only surviving news channel in a future overrun with morons. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

In 2005, the army chooses its most average soldier, Joe Bauers (played by the appropriately bland yet likeable Luke Wilson), to take part in their Human Hibernation Experiment. The idea is that they can save their best and brightest soldiers until their country needs them. Of course, they don’t want to risk one their best soldiers in the experiment, so they decide to use Bauers precisely because he’s at the top of the bell curve on every chart. They are unable to find a suitably average female soldier within their ranks, so instead recruit a prostitute named Rita (played by SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE alum Maya Rudolph) to join him. Alas, the commander of the experiment becomes too enamored of Rita’s pimp, Upgrayedd (the double d stands for a “double dose of pimping”), and gets busted for starting his own prostitution ring. The army base where Joe and Rita’s coffin-like deep freeze chambers reside is torn down and replaced by a Fuddruckers.

A wonderful documentary-like sequence, narrated with all the seriousness of James Earl Jones by Earl Mann, follows. It explains how evolution comes to favor not the most intelligent, but those who simply breed the most—i.e., idiots. This sequence contrasts a wealthy and intelligent yuppie couple who explain why they continue to put off having children because of how serious they take parental responsibility with a family of adulterous rednecks who breed like rabbits because they’re too stupid to employ birth control. As Carlos Mencia has repeatedly warned us, when a dee marries a dee, the kids will be dee dee dee! This is a well-documented social trend, and like most good cautionary science fiction tales, Judge takes this concept to its next logical extreme.

Cut to 500 years later. Although the experiment was only supposed to last for a year, Joe and Rita have remained in suspended animation until the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 bursts through the Fuddruckers (now Butt-Fuckers) and releases them. They awaken to a world in crisis, populated by slack-jawed ignoramuses who speak in a mix of hillbilly drawl and street slang. After failing to make any sense out of a lawyer named Frito (played by a convincingly dense Dax Shepard) whose house his deep sleep chamber has burst through, Joe wanders into a hospital looking for help. The admitting nurse can’t understand him (his normal speech sounding “faggy”), so can’t figure out which picture button to push on her console. Nor can he get any satisfaction from his doctor (a hilarious cameo by Justin Long). But when he tries to leave the hospital, he’s arrested for not paying, which he can’t do because he doesn’t have a UPC code tattooed on his wrist. Frito is assigned as his public defender and helps the prosecutor convict him, but he’s able to get out of jail by telling a guard he was supposed to be leaving today. He reunites with Rita, who’s been finding it much easier to ply her trade amongst dunderheads, but fears Upgrayedd will find a way to locate her and get his money. Frito attempts to lead them to a time machine so they can return to their own time, but it’s too difficult to locate inside the 18-square-mile Costco where Frito attended law school. They are arrested again, only this time the President of the United States, former porn star and Smack Down champion Camacho (played to the hilt by Terry Alan Crews), discovers prison tests show Joe is now the smartest man on earth and immediately appoints him to his cabinet, putting him in charge of fixing every problem in society, most importantly the dustbowl crisis. Crops aren’t growing because a sports drink that has replaced water in everything but toilets is used to irrigate them. After all, it has the electrolytes plants crave—not that anyone knows what an electrolyte is.

This is both the funniest film released this year and the bleakest, most cynically on-the-mark vision of the future since Terry Gilliam’s brilliant Brazil. Even while you find yourself laughing at its lowbrow humor, the back of your mind winces at how accurate its hyperbolic depiction of our current junk culture is. For instance, the most popular show on television is Ow, My Balls!, an unending series of crotch blows not so far removed from America’s Funniest Home Videos, and the most award-winning film of all time is Ass, which is nothing more than 90 minutes of a bare butt farting. Though these jokes are funny in and of themselves, the real joke is on the idiots who enjoy them. Its parody of our justice and health care systems alone is worth the price of admission. This is that rare movie that leaves you with a smile on your face, but a tremor in your soul.

Surely Fox came under a lot of pressure from the corporations that are skewered so savagely here. Carl’s Jr. has become an automated self-serve fast food joint capable of judging your parenting skills. Starbucks has become a hand job emporium. Surely this has much to do with Fox’s obvious attempt to kill this film. It could have been an enormous hit, but relegating it to a limited release in less than 10 cities with no fanfare assures it will slink out of theaters unnoticed. But unless Fox finds a way to deny its release on DVD, Mike Judge will have the last laugh. IDIOCRACY is destined to become a mega cult smash with millions of devotees.

IDIOCRACY [2006] Twentieth Century Fox. Limited theatrical release September 1/06 Directed by Mike Judge. Screenplay by Mike Judge and Etan Cohen, story by Mike Judge, JC, MJ and Etan Cohen. Produced by Mike Judge and Elysa Koplovitz. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shephard, Terry Alan Crews, David Herman, Justin Long, Stephen Root, Ryan Ransdell, Michael McCafferty, Thomas Hayden Church and Earl Mann. 84 Mins. Rated R.