Directed by: Mike Judge
Starring: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews, Dax Shepard
Mike Judge provides us with a satire in which a future society is so dimwitted that our heroes, average army soldier Joe Bauers (Wilson) and prostitute Rita (Rudolph), are the smartest people on Earth. They came from the past, when they were placed in hyperbolic chambers as part of an army experiment which was forgotten about over time. A Fuddruckers is built over the demolished army base which soon devolves in to "Buttfuckers" when Joe and Rita awake to their new world.
Judge has already tackled societal stupidity with Beavis and Butthead and corporate stupidity with the superior Office Space (1999). Idiocracy is an ungainly combination of the two which fails on many levels. One, it's not funny and two, the stupidity of the future citizens is variable. They can't spell and react to Joe's questions with little more than blank stares and drool, but yet can create a scanning system where they brand each person with a UPC code which can track the whereabouts of its citizens. Joe, as the smartest man on Earth, is soon made Secretary of the Interior by the president (Crews) and is tasked with figuring out why crops don't grow anymore. The future society uses a Gatorade-type drink on the crops instead of water, but let's give them kudos for at least being intelligent enough to use complex irrigation systems.
Idiocracy is a one-joke movie and the joke grows stale quickly. Wilson and Rudolph do their best with underwritten, bland characters. The movie itself runs only 84 minutes (including closing credits) and it still feels entirely too long.
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