Idiocracy
Y
SepT 6, 2006
In his various "Beavis and Butt-Head" projects and "Office Space," Mike Judge has proved himself a keen-eyed observer of the ascendancy of mediocrity. His second live-action feature, "Idiocracy," is often stingingly funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping ground. Perhaps the incisive satire cuts too close to home, with its dystopian vision of a world peopled by inarticulate, TV-addicted dolts who eagerly throw themselves under any and every set of corporate wheels that steamroll toward them. Perhaps low test-screening results reflect the very dumbing down the film laments.
"Idiocracy" is hardly flawless; much like "Office Space," it delivers a socko premise but can't quite sustain the edge, lapsing into formulaic storytelling that dulls the payoff. But given the year's generally dismal Hollywood output, Fox's decision to give the film a perfunctory release without press screenings feels overly cautious. At any rate, the pic is sure to achieve cult-fave status on DVD.
With his "King of the Hill" colleague Etan Cohen, Judge lays out a comic but dire warning. A succinct white-collar-vs.-white-trash comparison illustrates the devolution of natural selection, which now favors not those with the intelligence and instinct to thrive, but those who reproduce the most frequently. In other words, Jerry Springer need not fear running out of material.
Luke Wilson brings a perfect blinking blandness to the film's unlikely hero, Joe Bauers, a soldier the military chooses for its Human Hibernation Project. Remarkable only for how unwaveringly average he is, Joe hits the median on every chart and eagerly submits himself to a yearlong deep freeze. His fellow experiment subject and potential mate is prostitute Rita (an occasionally funny, bimbo-tough Maya Rudolph).
As fate and short attention span would have it, the Army base conducting the test closes amid scandal, soon to be replaced by a Fuddruckers. With the scientific community focused on more pressing matters of hair loss and penile dysfunction, Joe and Rita are forgotten for 500 years, until the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 releases them from their coffin-like chambers into a world of raging stupidity. Barcode-tattooed citizens subsist on buckets o' fat while watching the Masturbation Network, the Violence Channel or, in a bold bit of reverse product placement, the Fox News Network, whose anchors are wrestling-circuit celebs. The president (a very funny Terry Alan Crews) is a former porn star and smackdown champ.
In a world where language has degenerated into grunting, monosyllabic profanity, Joe's use of grammatical sentences marks him as "faggy." It also makes him the smartest man on the planet, enlisted by President Camacho and his sharp-as-marbles cabinet to save the country from its crop and French fries crises. Reunited with Rita and receiving the questionable assistance of an attorney named Frito (Dax Shepard, believably dense), Joe tries to save the world while searching for the time machine that will return him to 2005. Lending the proceedings faux gravitas is Earl Mann's voice-over narration in the manner of James Earl Jones.
The promise of early scenes, which pack jokes into the soundtrack and the frame, is fulfilled with less power as the story progresses, the screenplay resorting to timeworn movie tropes without enough undermining satire. Watching a boring guy interact with a bunch of dim bulbs is the stuff of diminishing returns.
But "Idiocracy" hits the bull's-eye with its portrayal of a brand-obsessed USA, where Costco is a city unto itself and the supreme value is market share. Justice, as it were, is doled out in the gladiator spectacle of "Monday Night Rehabilitation" and through fast food-dispensing machines, which can assess a customer's worthiness as a parent. The production creates its closer-than-you-think future world with a minimum of fuss and a sometimes willfully chintzy but always effective look.
IDIOCRACY
20th Century Fox
A Ternion production
Credits:
Director: Mike Judge
Screenwriters: Mike Judge, Etan Cohen
Story: Mike Judge, JC, MJ and Etan Cohen
Producers: Mike Judge, Elysa Koplovitz
Executive producer: Michael Nelson
Director of photography: Tim Suhrstedt
Production designer: Darren Gilford
Music: Theodore Shapiro
Costume designer: Debra McGuire
Editor: David Rennie
Cast:
Joe Bauers: Luke Wilson
Rita: Maya Rudolph
Frito: Dax Shepard
President Camacho: Terry Alan Crews
Secretary of State: David Herman
Officer Collins: Michael McCafferty
Brawndo CEO: Thomas Haden Church
Narrator: Earl Mann
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 84 minutes
"Idiocracy" is hardly flawless; much like "Office Space," it delivers a socko premise but can't quite sustain the edge, lapsing into formulaic storytelling that dulls the payoff. But given the year's generally dismal Hollywood output, Fox's decision to give the film a perfunctory release without press screenings feels overly cautious. At any rate, the pic is sure to achieve cult-fave status on DVD.
With his "King of the Hill" colleague Etan Cohen, Judge lays out a comic but dire warning. A succinct white-collar-vs.-white-trash comparison illustrates the devolution of natural selection, which now favors not those with the intelligence and instinct to thrive, but those who reproduce the most frequently. In other words, Jerry Springer need not fear running out of material.
Luke Wilson brings a perfect blinking blandness to the film's unlikely hero, Joe Bauers, a soldier the military chooses for its Human Hibernation Project. Remarkable only for how unwaveringly average he is, Joe hits the median on every chart and eagerly submits himself to a yearlong deep freeze. His fellow experiment subject and potential mate is prostitute Rita (an occasionally funny, bimbo-tough Maya Rudolph).
As fate and short attention span would have it, the Army base conducting the test closes amid scandal, soon to be replaced by a Fuddruckers. With the scientific community focused on more pressing matters of hair loss and penile dysfunction, Joe and Rita are forgotten for 500 years, until the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 releases them from their coffin-like chambers into a world of raging stupidity. Barcode-tattooed citizens subsist on buckets o' fat while watching the Masturbation Network, the Violence Channel or, in a bold bit of reverse product placement, the Fox News Network, whose anchors are wrestling-circuit celebs. The president (a very funny Terry Alan Crews) is a former porn star and smackdown champ.
In a world where language has degenerated into grunting, monosyllabic profanity, Joe's use of grammatical sentences marks him as "faggy." It also makes him the smartest man on the planet, enlisted by President Camacho and his sharp-as-marbles cabinet to save the country from its crop and French fries crises. Reunited with Rita and receiving the questionable assistance of an attorney named Frito (Dax Shepard, believably dense), Joe tries to save the world while searching for the time machine that will return him to 2005. Lending the proceedings faux gravitas is Earl Mann's voice-over narration in the manner of James Earl Jones.
The promise of early scenes, which pack jokes into the soundtrack and the frame, is fulfilled with less power as the story progresses, the screenplay resorting to timeworn movie tropes without enough undermining satire. Watching a boring guy interact with a bunch of dim bulbs is the stuff of diminishing returns.
But "Idiocracy" hits the bull's-eye with its portrayal of a brand-obsessed USA, where Costco is a city unto itself and the supreme value is market share. Justice, as it were, is doled out in the gladiator spectacle of "Monday Night Rehabilitation" and through fast food-dispensing machines, which can assess a customer's worthiness as a parent. The production creates its closer-than-you-think future world with a minimum of fuss and a sometimes willfully chintzy but always effective look.
IDIOCRACY
20th Century Fox
A Ternion production
Credits:
Director: Mike Judge
Screenwriters: Mike Judge, Etan Cohen
Story: Mike Judge, JC, MJ and Etan Cohen
Producers: Mike Judge, Elysa Koplovitz
Executive producer: Michael Nelson
Director of photography: Tim Suhrstedt
Production designer: Darren Gilford
Music: Theodore Shapiro
Costume designer: Debra McGuire
Editor: David Rennie
Cast:
Joe Bauers: Luke Wilson
Rita: Maya Rudolph
Frito: Dax Shepard
President Camacho: Terry Alan Crews
Secretary of State: David Herman
Officer Collins: Michael McCafferty
Brawndo CEO: Thomas Haden Church
Narrator: Earl Mann
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 84 minutes
