Blog #51 Idiocracy 2006 Movie Review

Directed by Mike Judge

Screenplay by Etan Cohen and Mike Judge

Release Date: September 1, 2006

Country: United States

Language: English

Budget: $2.4 million

Box Office: $495,3031¹

Genre: Adventure, Comedy, SciFi, and Thriller²

Image 3 The President takes Joe for a ride

Starring

Luke Wilson as Joe Bauers / Not Sure

Maya Rudolph as Rita

Dax Shepard as Frito Pendejo

Terry Crews as Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho – The president of the United States

Plot

A young soldier, Joe Bauers, is the average man, literally. Joe has the perfect job. He sits at a desk in a library no one comes to. Joe and Rita (a citizen) are chosen to be part of an experiment to see if a man and a woman could be freeze-dried to awaken a year later. Due to stupidity, the project is forgotten, and the two end up in the largest garbage pile, spilling into a city that is five hundred years in the future.

Image 4 Journey to the Time Machine at Costco

People have degenerated into a society of very low IQ’s, with subsequent results. Joe and Rita are now the smartest people in the world. They end up in prison and are then tapped by the president of the United States to solve the country’s huge problems.

Positives

It has some believable scenes from today that forecast these problems for tomorrow. The most relevant scene contained brilliant people deciding not to have a baby, at least right now, because of the state of the world. The result is they never do, but the “white trash” fellow is happily procreating with his wife (? I’m not sure if they are married) and the lady next door. Hence, there is an increase in offspring from the very dumb and a decrease in the very smart.

Image 5 Explaining why they won’t have children

Negatives

It is idiotic. How the city is run, how the president and his cabinet work, and the failure of crops they are watering with a Gatorade-like product. I also want to warn you about the crude language and ideas based on the basest type of human ideas.

Conclusions

I found this film to be very funny. Initially, Idiocracy really tanked at the box office, but it seems it has become a cult classic. According to the Austin American-Stateman- 20th Century Fox-, the film’s distributor was entirely absent in promoting the feature. At the same time, posters were released to theaters, “no movie trailers, no ads, and only two stills,” and no press kits were released.1 The writing is what makes it so good. No wonder Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) and Mike Judge (Office Space) wrote the screenplay.