IDIOCRACY

by Kevin Koehler

God, I wish I could say this film is an unheralded masterpiece. It would confirm every sneaking suspicion I have about the artistic integrity of film studios who dumped Idiocracy on a measly 125 screens without so much as a preview for critics, a press kit, a trailer, or a television commercial. It would confirm my suspicions about the wanton tastes of mainstream audiences, dictated by advertising and drawn to unchallenging material. It would confirm my suspicions about Mike Judge as a contemporary satirist auteur of few equals. It would confirm my suspicions about the lazy film critics who largely ignored the picture or gave it passive praise. Intelligent filmgoers would have another great film to discuss among themselves while I get to bask in the glow of my own beautiful wisdom. Everyone wins.

Regrettably, Idiocracy is not an unheralded masterpiece. Not that the film is terrible by any stretch; instead, it’s frustratingly uneven with moments of snarky brilliance interrupted by long stretches of well-intentioned social commentary. Idiocracy is polemic in search of a punch line or plot, and often finding neither.

Joe Bauers is quite literally the most average guy in the world, verified by every test the U.S. Army has to measure him by. For this reason, Joe has been chosen along with a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph) for a government hibernation experiment – the two will be put to sleep for a full year and then studied. Unfortunately, the program is shut down and the guinea pigs forgotten; Joe and Rita lay undisturbed in their capsules for 500 years until “the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505” awakens them in a dystopian future dominated by morons and corporations, ruled by the dictatorial hand of a pro wrestler turned-President (Terry Crews), and characterized by the complete devolution of the English language.

Average, unmotivated Joe is now the smartest man alive, surrounded by halfwits with whom he can hardly communicate. Joe’s doctor (cameo by Justin Long) describes his situation thusly: “You’re fucked up, you sound like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded.” He ends up being sent to jail for not paying his hospital bill but escapes simply by telling the prison guard he got in the wrong line.

Much of Idiocracy hits squarely on its multiple, related targets: anti-intellectualism, the infantilization of media, senseless consumerism, and the political spectacle of images over ideas that often describes our political system. The trouble with good ideas, however, is that you have to follow through; Judge's soapbox sermon quickly grows tedious. Idiocracy is a film that sounds more entertaining when explained to others rather than watched. Case in point: a future language that consists solely of grunts punctuated by swear words probably sounded hilarious when conceived (Frito, played by Dax Shepard, speaks entirely in this bastardized amalgam of hillbilly and ghetto slang), but on the screen proves grating and repetitive. The picture also spends some strangely extended time deriding sports drinks; it’s time generally wasted. Arguments about corporate sponsorship – no incisive commentary, mind you - are likewise made again and again and one more time for good measure. Poor, talented Maya Rudolph (about the best thing Saturday Night Live has going for it) serves little purpose besides a few purposeless jokes about the world's oldest profession that frankly aren't that funny.

I suppose we will just have to wait for another film with big ideas to come along and save comedies from ourselves. Near the close of the picture, newly-elected President Joe Bauer says it best:

“There was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn’t just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies that had stories so you knew whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time could come again.”

Amen, brother.

Interesting footnote: Many theories abound as to why 20th Century Fox buried this film. John Patterson in British paper The Guardian theorized it was the film’s overt anti-corporate message while Dan Mitchell of the New York Times suggests that Fox was scared off by Idiocracy’s account of evolutionary dysgenics.

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