Review of Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”

“There was a time when reading wasn’t just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!” – Joe Bowers, Idiocracy

Channel-surfing with my siblings during a family visit, I happened to come across Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy right at the opening, a film I would not even know existed if it weren’t for HBO playing it perpetually for several months now. We LOLed through most of it, and when the credits rolled and the laughter subsided. Someone stated what we were all thinking:

“That movie hit a little too close to the mark.”

Quick Synopsis: Joe Bauers is a completely average person, average in every way. He gets put to sleep and wakes up 500 years in the future, where centuries of increasingly inane entertainment, Fox News, and commercialism have brought average IQs down to what we consider mentally challenged today.

The opening clip is totally awesome (language advisory):

Although Fox had a contractual obligation to release this film, they did nothing to promote it. Probably because the film’s critical satire of Costco, Starbucks, Carl’s Jr., Fudruckers, and Fox News wasn’t good for advertising.

Mike Judge has a Bachelors in Physics and his film Office Space was very funny and insightful. While his shows King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead had mass appeal. This blend of intelligence and accessibility make Judge perfect for making a movie like this.

Judge’s depiction of the culture of stupidity is actually frighteningly realistic. Watching the dittohead assault on academia or spending an hour browsing MySpace profiles confirms that, when a doctor in Idiocracy diagnoses Joe, “Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded,” Judge is taking a page from a segment of today’s society.

Friday night’s at the comic shop, we gamers are subject to endless verbal abuse from drunk people hanging out at the neighboring nightclub. They laugh at us, call us fags, and deride our preference for intellectual stimulation to chemical intoxication.

We laugh at them with films like Idiocracy.