This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:
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Rating: R
Director: Mike Judge
Writers: Mike Judge
Stars: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews
Release Date: January 25, 2007 (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 24 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
In 2005, United States Army librarian Joe Bauers is selected for a government suspended animation experiment as the most average individual in the armed forces. Lacking a suitable female candidate, the military hires a prostitute, Rita, by paying off her pimp, Upgrayedd, and dismissing charges against her. A scandal involving the officer overseeing the initiative and Upgrayedd forces the closure of the military base under which Joe and Rita were placed in hibernation, suspending the project indefinitely. Over the next five hundred years, average intelligence decreases due to societal expectations, discouraging well-educated individuals from having children as the less-educated reproduce indiscriminately; genetic engineering is forgone in favor of hair loss and erectile dysfunction treatments. As a result, infrastructure deteriorates, low comedy and explicitness defines culture, and consumerism is left unfettered.
Five hundred years later, a garbage avalanche disturbs Joe and Rita's hibernation chambers. Joe awakens in Frito Pendejo's apartment in previously-occupied Washington, D.C. Seeking assistance, Joe's higher register conflicts with average anti-intellectualism. He enters a hospital, believing the army administered to him hallucinogenic drugs. Joe realizes the year upon reading a magazine and his hospital bill, but he is arrested at a Carl's Jr. for not having a bar code tattoo and being unable to pay his bill. Joe is sent to trial; Frito represents Joe but alleges he destroyed his apartment. The judge perceives Joe to have an effeminate voice and homosexual demeanor, finding him guilty and sentencing him to prison. Rita resumes her job as a prostitute.
Joe is sent to a correctional facility, where a faulty identification machine registers his name as "Not Sure", and takes a simplified aptitude test. He escapes from prison after erroneously informing a guard that he had served his sentence. Joe visits Frito, who agrees to guide him to a time machine—located within a large Costco Wholesale store—after Joe promises to create a savings account in Frito's name, earning him billions in compound interest. With Rita, Joe and Frito enter the store, but Joe is arrested after his bar code is scanned. Joe is taken to the White House and appointed secretary of the interior by president Dwayne Camacho for his performance on the aptitude test. In an address, Camacho states that Joe will resolve unfruitful crop yields, dust storms, and a stagnant economy, among other issues, within a week or face imprisonment.
Joe and Rita visit a crop field. Frito gives him an incomprehensible map to the time machine. Joe discovers that the country's crops are being watered with Brawndo, a sports drink whose parent company owns the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Communications Commission; the concentration of electrolytes in Brawndo has destroyed natural topsoil, causing dust storms. Despite opposition to his plan in the form of circular reasoning from the Cabinet, Joe convinced Camacho to use water instead of Brawndo in irrigation. Consequently, Brawndo—who employs half of the population—files for bankruptcy, inciting riots as immediate improvement to the crops did not materialize.
At the Extreme Court, Joe is sentenced to be publicly executed in a monster truck demolition derby against undefeated rehabilitation officer Beef Supreme. Rita and Frito discover that Joe's reintroduction of water to the soil allowed crops to grow. Rita pays a cameraman to broadcast the crops on the stadium's Jumbotron, prompting Camacho to grant Joe a presidential pardon. Joe discovers the time machine was an amusement ride, a detail Frito was aware of. Joe becomes president and marries Rita, with whom he has three children. Frito becomes vice president and has 32 children, all stated to be "the dumbest kids ever to walk the earth" in contrast to Joe and Rita's children, who are "the three smartest kids in the world."
My Review:
People bring Idiocracy up to me more often than just about any other movie.
"Hey, doesn't it feel like Idiocracy is happening in real life?"
"I think Idiocracy underestimated how fast everyone would get stupider."
"That Idiocracy movie was prophetic."
etc.
Two decades later, this movie is still hilarious, even if it increasingly seems ominous and prescient. At the time it was released, a comedy about a societal collapse caused primarily because the smart people didn't procreate while the dumb people did, felt just relatable enough to be funny, but not like a truly serious concern. Even then, we knew we lived in a culture that increasingly rejected education and effort in favor of hedonism and convenience, but we could laugh at it because surely someone would pull us out of that nosedive at some point... right? We now know better.
The "demographics is destiny" premise of the film is clever and increasingly obvious. We're starting to arrive at some of these population questions in real life. Intelligent people have been arguing for and promoting population control measures for decades, believing that too many humans is a bad thing for the environment. They also just generally don't want kids for lifestyle convenience reasons. We have correspondingly seen birthrates continuing to drop in the most affluent and developed countries around the world. However, the rest of the world continues procreating. As the film's narrator says, "evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence." At some point, those parts of the world that have continued having children will run the planet, while those who opted against it will be gone. Evolution will not reward intelligence. It will reward those who passed on their genetic lineage. Judge sugarcoated his warning with dark comedy.
One of the best and most consistently funny ways that Judge conveys the dumbing down of the human race, in his screenplay, is through the deterioration of language.
Narrator: Unaware of what year it was, Joe wandered the streets desperate for help. But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts. Joe was able to understand them, but when he spoke in an ordinary voice he sounded pompous and ***** to them.
This is particularly humorous when Joe visits a doctor (played by Justin Long) in the future, who can barely communicate coherently. Eventually the doctor becomes panicked that Joe does not have an identification tattoo, and begins loudly squealing, "Why come you no have a tattoo?" until Joe is forced to flee the hospital authorities. During Joe's first criminal prosecution the lawyers on both sides, and the judge, were barely intelligible and you could detect a lot o the of early 2000s reality TV DNA within the proceedings. In some ways, this film asks you to imagine a society wherein everyone you meet is like the worst person you ever saw on Jersey Shore, The Real World, or Flavor of Love.
The movie is brutal to America's media and corporate structure. In the future. Costco has become the premiere law school in the country (having bought competitors out), and when we visit the store, its employees greet everyone by saying, "welcome to Costco, I love you." Fuddruckers has changed its name to something, uh, inappropriate. Starbucks offers sexual acts for its patrons. The current top film at the box office - and the winner of many Oscars - is a film that is 90 minutes of just someone's rear end. There's one particular scene which felt to me as though it really summed up Judge's dystopian bleak future really well.
Carl's Jr. Computer: Enjoy your EXTRA BIG A** FRIES!
Woman at Carl's Jr.: You didn't give me no fries, I got an empty box.
Carl's Jr. Computer: Would you like another EXTRA BIG A** FRIES?
Woman at Carl's Jr.: I said I didn't get any!
Carl's Jr. Computer: Thank you! Your account has been charged. Your balance is zero. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase.
Woman at Carl's Jr.: What? Oh no, NO!
[She hits the machine. An alarm goes off, and a sign appears on the computer saying "WARNING! Carl's Jr. Frowns Upon Vandalism"]
Carl's Jr. Computer: I'm sorry you're having trouble. I'm sorry you're having trouble.
Woman at Carl's Jr.: Come on! My kids are starvin'!
Carl's Jr. Computer: [the woman kicks the computer, and it sprays a fast-acting tranquilizer in her face] This should help you calm down. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr... "F*** You, I'm Eating."
"Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr." LOL. But on the other hand... is that crazier than taking custody of, then surgically altering and permanently sterilizing a minor without his/her parental consent?
Maybe real life needs some big a** fries to smooth things over.
If you're feeling sorry for Carl's Jr., which took a lot of abuse in the film, let me disabuse you of that sentiment. They earned it:
The film is crude, and in that sense it more than earns is R-rating, but its point is that a society becoming continuously cruder has no obvious end point on that journey. The most ludicrous part of this film is that its dumb population held on for as long as they did. Societal collapse is a matter of decades, not centuries. Who kept the infrastructure going? Who built and repaired the future tech in the films? How did the plants get by on Brawndo for two hundred years until the dust bowl happened? Who switched the irrigation from Brawndo back to water after Joe suggested it? Well, you're not supposed to think on any of that too much. At any rate, the movie wouldn't have been as funny set in the 2040s. A dystopia long after the audience is dead is something we can laugh at. A dystopia we might have to live through ourselves is something else.
Overall, I still really enjoyed Idiocracy and found much of it to be hilarious, while simultaneously feeling a sense of foreboding while watching it, too. The details and specifics might not be entirely accurate, but I think Mike Judge definitely has a point when arguing that there will be severe negative consequences for the planet if intelligent and affluent people refuse to pass on their DNA. In fact, this might even be the most important conversation of our species for the next few decades. That said, if we are doomed to a crash, maybe the best we can do is grab an enormous cheeseburger and fries, then lean in and enjoy it.
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