The Years Passed and Mankind Became Stupider at a Frightening Rate

Idiocracy may not be a word you have ever heard before but all you really need to know is it was conceived by Mike Judge, the mind that brought you the subversive Beavis and Butt-Head and the brilliantly funny Office Space as well as the watchable King of the Hill. The plot of the movie is pretty ingenious as Judge notices that dumber people are breeding at a higher rate while the smarter people tend to wait, sometimes to the point that it ends up being too late. At this rate, Judge theorizes that this will lead to the dumbing down of America that will make the Paris Hilton-obsessed of today look like Rhodes Scholars in comparison.

The story starts off in present day with your average Joe, quite literally as his name is Joe and he is completely average in every way, in Luke Wilson (Legally Blonde) picked for his averageness for a military experiment to see if they can keep soldiers alive for future wars. Since they didn’t have a comparable female in the army, the military pays a pimp Upgrayedd (played by Scareface whose Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta was hilariously used in Office Space) to offer up one of his ladies in Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live).

Naturally the experiment goes bad when the main guy behind it ends up in jail leaving no one to know about it. And it is not until the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 until they are jarred loose from their sleeping chambers into a world that is run by corporations, the Congress is now sponsored by Pepsi and the Secretary of Defense mentions Carl’s Jr. in every sentence because he gets a fee for it.

It is because of the anti-corporate message that you probably have never heard of Idiocracy as the movie was released by 20th Century Fox, whose parent company News Corp is one of the worst offenders of greed trumps morals philosophy (also displayed in their television division as I mentioned in Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Ten Times…). Judge may not have helped things when he depicted Fox News anchormen of the future on air wardrobe as no shirts for the guys and bikinis for the woman. Nonetheless the braintrust at Fox with their hurt feelings decided to only give the film a limited release, no trailer, no ads, no press kits, and the film wasn’t even screened for critics to review.

The morons of the future, in true Judge style, are what makes the movie. Dax Shepard (Let's Go to Prison) is Joe’s inept lawyer and the one who tries to help him to the Time Machine that could get him and Rudolph back to present day. Stephan Root (Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story) is your future judge, Justin Long (he’s a Mac) is your future doctor, and Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris) is your future president, Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, while Thomas Hayden Church (Ned and Stacy) is the CEO of Brawndo, a Gatoraid type sports drink that now is delivered to all the drinking fountains instead of water.

Certainly anyone who has found enjoyment in Judge’s past work will love this movie as well. But be warned that the future is scary and you may wonder at the rate our country is going that it will really take 500 years for a show called Ow, My Balls! to be the highest rated show on television. And I not even sure how to explain the Oscar winning movie that year, you just need to check out the DVD to get the full effect of the film.

Idiocracy gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.