I'm actually surprised that none of the corporations mocked in Mike Judge's IDIOCRACY didn't sue the hell out of him and 20th Century Fox over many of the future gags. From FuddRuckers turned into ButtF-----s to Starbucks going from serving coffee to serving blowjobs, its kinda fun that Judge either got away with it. Nah, FOX probably paid good money to shut up said parties.
Years ago, when I was still a reviewer for "Test Pattern" at the now-defunct COMING ATTRATIONS BY CORONA website, the script for IDIOCRACY, then known as 3001, passed around the staff and I read it. I laughed and I wanted to see this movie.
That was six years ago. IDIOCRACY was shot in 2004 and released last year....if you want to call it a "release." It was more like FOX throwing a baby into a dumpster at the Prom. Though after seeing IDIOCRACY, I don't blame FOX for not wanting to lose money on this picture in theatres.
Who knows why Judge wanted to make IDIOCRACY. Maybe some idiot cut him off at traffic. Maybe it was the Intelligent Design folks. Either way, the whole premise of the movie is that Luke Wilson was a mediocre soldier in terms of intelligence and capacity so he's recruited for a hibernation experiment to last one year.
He's accidently forgotten and he wakes up 500 years later to a future where everyone is absolutely stupid, the #1 movie in theatres is an ass farting for 90 minutes, and worst of all, Wilson is the smartest man on Earth.
Quite a few reviews kept making the cliche that IDIOCRACY was "Judge making his own FUTURAMA" episode, and they're wrong. IDIOCRACY doesn't have the wit or smart pop culture gags of Matt Groening's program. Instead, I would say that its more like BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD set in the future. Its that sort of (stupid) humor that made Judge's career, and he's good at it.
Personally my favorite joke in IDIOCRACY is an image of the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., with a rundown Washington Monument in the distance, and rednecks boating and water-skiing on the sacred waters.
It's probably the best joke in the picture, and maybe that's the problem with IDIOCRACY. The same joke is repeated over and over again, with variations.
You have the Pro Wrestler-turned-President. There is the joke that its now "faggy & pompous" to use corret English, that these people are so stupid they use Gatorade instead of water on crops, you name it. Most of them though either feel flat or createed a "heh" instead of "Ha Ha" from me.
Then there is Maya Rudolph. I never liked her on SNL, and either its her fault, her character or both, she's damn annoying in IDIOCRACY.
That said, I enjoyed IDIOCRACY in a passing, video rental sense. Maybe not enough to recommend it, but surely beats the crap out of a few studio comedies that do get wide theatrical releases like the latest Dane Cook movie.
Besides, how can anyone hate a movie where Charlie Chaplin was a Nazi?
