#55 - Idiocracy (2006)

Dissapointment. That's what Idiocracy is. As soon as I read the premise I was hooked and really wanted to watch this film. But right after the promising first twenty minutes of the film, it all goes downhill. Maybe if the film was done by someone other than Mike Judge it would have been a masterpiece. I do admit it's pretty funny at times but it's so exaggerated that the stink of missed potential ruined the film for me.

And it's a shame because the idea behind the film, like I said, is perfect. Ever heard of the demographic-economic paradox? Basically, intelligent, wealthy people have less offspring than poor, uneducated people. It's an issue that really troubles me and can be summed up with the film's spot on quote: "Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

In this film. an average, everyday man (Luke Wilson) is frozen by the US Army along a hooker (Maya Rudolph) as part of an experiment, but the man in charge is fired and both are forgotten until they wake five hundred years in a dystopian future... where stupid people walk the earth and Terry Crews is the president of the United States. Sounds like a funny but insightful film, right? Unluckily, it falls short on both aspects. For comedic purposes (this is a Mike Judge film, after all), everyone is not just dumb: they are plain retarded. I would have preferred the film to be set, for instance, 150 years into the future instead of the whopping 500 they went with, and replacing the retards with average people that take all the shitty traits of western culture to the extreme. That way it could still be a very funny film while being a little bit more grounded in reality so the social commentary behind it is better.

 

But turns out the film can get as stupid as what it's trying to satirize.

Dissapointing as it is, it is still a decent film. While all the futuretards are so stupid they're not even funny, Luke Wilson is perfectly cast, Maya Rudolph is surprisingly entertaining and Terry Crews... pro-wrestler president. Enough said. I know I complained a lot about this alternate future being stupid, but to be honest, the one thing that bothered me was its inhabitants. Everything else about this future is great. Come on, sports drinks replacing water? Starbucks offering handjobs? Fox News being stupid? Oh, sorry, we already have the latter.

And I admit the film is pretty damn funny. Not much from the characters or the dialogue, but the sheer stupidity of the situations they run into. The punishment for political prisoners being a demolition derby; water being reserved for the toilet and everyone laughing when Luke Wilson's character asks for a sip; the health care system; all hilarious, memorable scenes.

   

"But then an even greater force emerged, the U.N. And the UN un-nazied the world- forever."

It is an entertaining film, but honestly, I can't stand how mind numbingly stupid it can get. There's funny stupid, and there's annoying stupid. This movie offers a lot of the latter. Plus, I love the fact that the film tackles dysgenic stupidity and the demographic-economic paradox, but the execution is terrible. I can't say I can recommend it unless you're in for the laughs.