Idiocracy (2006)

Directed by: Mike Judge | 84 minutes | comedy, adventure, science fiction | Actors: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, Anthony ‘Citric’ Campos, David Herman, Sonny Castillo, Kevin McAfee, Robert Musgrave, Michael McCafferty, Ryan Melton, Justin Long, Heath Jones, Eli Muñoz, Patrick Fischler

A missed opportunity: that’s how you could describe ‘Idiocracy’ by filmmaker Mike Judge. The creator of ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ ventured into a feature film again after the successful ‘Office Space’ (1999).The premise of ‘Idiocracy’ is simple: soldier Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) and prostitute Rita become secretive army experiment frozen, with the aim of being thawed again a year later. Should the project succeed, the military could freeze soldiers in quiet times and then wake them up when they come in handy.

However, the secret project is called off within a year and Joe and Rita are forgotten. Only five hundred years later, the two awaken to a world where the average IQ is almost below freezing. In ‘Idiocracy’ Judge sketches in a comical way the downward spiral in which we as humans would currently be. In the opening scene, the film shows smart career people who are too busy with kids until it’s too late, while trailer trash with time too much multiplies at a rapid pace. Simple entertainment like wrestling is increasingly preferred over respectable art that makes you think.

So sharp social criticism and most definitely a starting point that can be turned into an intelligent satire. Unfortunately, the messy result leaves a lot to be desired. ‘Idiocracy’ itself regularly lapses into the bland kind of humor that is still taken off in the first few minutes. For example, the intersection between hillbilly and ghetto language, into which English has been transformed over five hundred years, is still fun for the first few minutes. The new only wears off quickly and the muttering gets boring after a while. Too much time is also spent on side issues such as sports drinks that flow from the tap instead of water. ‘Idiocracy’ contains some hints of mind-numbing entertainment, of aggressive advertising campaigns by large corporations that pollute the streets and of passive citizens who blindly accept this commercial talk as true. However, a common thread is hard to find and in the end the film barely rises above the majority of bland entertainment that Mike Judge wants to lash out at.

The film sat on a shelf for ages, until film studio Fox finally gave it a very limited theatrical release without making any effort to publicize it. ‘Idiocracy’ has clearly also been put through the paces in Fox’s editing room before release, because the sloppy end result must not have been Judge’s intention. Until then, for jokes about someone from our time accidentally ending up in the future, you better watch a few more episodes of ‘Futurama’.