Imagine a country where, even at the highest levels of power, ignorance is flaunted and incompetence rewarded. OK, maybe that's too easy. Imagine a studio dumping a movie because it just doesn't know how to sell it. Well, that doesn't take any imagination at all, does it? "Idiocracy," the new film by Mike Judge ("Office Space," "King of the Hill," "Beavis and Butthead"), opened in a handful of theaters in the United States while I was in Canada for the Toronto Film Festival. When I got back I learned that none of those theaters was in Seattle, so -- guess what? -- I haven't been able to see it.
But Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule reports that it's superficially dumb, deceptively smart -- and funny:
The groundwork for "Idiocracy" is laid in a hilarious parody of authoritarian educational films that exposes the roots of humanity’s slippery slide toward pea-brain-osity in the frigidity of intellectuals (or at least their yuppie subset) and the unchecked rutting of the uneducated poor. Smart folks are too selfish to procreate, while Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae can’t keep their genitalia to themselves.I recommend checking out Dennis's essay about the film -- and what happened to it -- here. (BTW, as I write this, "Idiocracy" has a 71% rating on RottenTomatoes.com, compared to 43% for last week's box-office topper, "Gridiron Gang"; 31% for Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia"; and 17% for "All the King's Men," opening Friday.)Sounds simple enough, right? But by the time the movie really gets going Judge has laid culpability for the crumbling mental capacity of society at the feet of lawmakers, corporations and opportunistic politicians too. And let’s not forget the military—insofar as they represent by definition the aggressive arm of any government, Judge certainly hasn’t. A low-level army base slacker (Luke Wilson) and a randomly selected hooker (Maya Rudolph) are selected to participate in a military experiment, headed by an officer with more than just a little taste for the pimpin’ lifestyle—that’s how the hooker gets roped in. The experiment is designed to monitor physical changes in cryogenically frozen subjects over a period of a year. But when the officer’s illegal activities end up getting him imprisoned and the base bulldozed, Wilson and Rudolph are left on ice not for a year but for 500. The pair, barely three digits in the IQ department between them to start with, awaken to a world so battered and worn down by an abased pop culture, relentless corporate corruption and political ineffectuality that they are, by acidly ironic default, the smartest people on the planet.
The positive reviews astound me. I really wanted to like it. I liked Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, etc. and I was all prepared to see smart satire on the growing idiocy of American culture, and condemn Fox for dumping it. What I got was an occasionally funny, mostly poorly made, ugly movie that not is not only meandering, but submits to so many cliched plot turns, that I all I could think of after the movie was "Why didn't anyone tell Mike Judge that he was making something terrible?" The premise for the movie could inspire a funny satire, but when you load it with uglyness (on display in the still), from the wardrobe to the set design, to the way the characters look, you're not making a comically horrific future, so much as a 90 minute eye-sore.
I'm not even sure what I saw was Judge's cut, but even if it wasn't, there's little you could salvage from the movie to make any kind of coherent, funny movie.
It's probably best it got burried, and I hope Judge has gotten all this crappieness out of his system.
I've seen it. It has some funny material, but it appears to have been a painfully, painfully underfunded production; it looks like they filmed what they could then tied the rest together with a voice-over narrator. I've been meaning to write something about it, but it seems unfair to review pieces of a movie.
Houston was one of the cities, so I was able to see the movie a few nights ago. And though I found the movie amusing, most of the satire was pointed at fairly obvious targets. I certainly never felt implicated (except maybe at the beginning, since my wife and I have decided not to have children). The movie allowed me to laugh at "them" without ever pointing the finger at myself. Still, I laughed. But I wonder if the way this movie was dumped by the studio will cause many to overpraise it. The movie allows its audience to feel superior to all the idiots out there, and praising the movie allows one to feel superior to the stupid execs and marketers at the studio.
I saw “Idiocracy� opening weekend in Dallas. It was enjoyable, but seemed very rough and very uneven. There were parts that really made me laugh and others that made me groan. Overall I thought it was better than a lot of movies currently being distributed, however it owes a lot to its premise. I walked out of the theater (which consisted of less than 10 people), thinking that this movie could have been so much more.
I had read Judge was forced to re-shoot a lot of material. I keep wondering how much better or worse would the movie have been without the re-shooting.
Maya Rudolph was very stunning. I had never really found her attractive before, but now I’m eagerly looking forward to her next role.
None of the reasons that have been thrown around as to why Fox just dumped this movie makes any sense.
1) They don’t know how to market it.
They slap from the creator of “Beavis and Butthead�, “King of the Hill�, and “Office Space� and a couple of funny lines from the movie and they’re done.
2) The Corporations that Judge lampoons are forcing Fox to pull it.
They most have agreed at some point. Even if they changed their mind it looks like that would create an opportunity for marketing. “The movie Starbucks doesn’t want you to see�.
3) It’s a marketing ploy to drive DVD sales
“Idiocracy� might not have been huge at the box office, but why throw away that money for the hopes that it may increase DVD sales.
I saw it (and now I wish I'd saved my ticket stub!), and while I liked it a lot, I agree with the above posters that it plays as a better IDEA for a movie than as a finished product. The art direction is stunning, on a par with, say, "Sleeper" in creating an entire, cohesive, even plausible future world. It seems all the better considering the budget constraints that must have been in operation.
I agree with Dennis that the performances are spot-on, especially Dax Shepherd as our "guide" to what daily life must be like in the idiotic future. The guy never strikes a wrong note - he's fully committed to the reality of Frito's daily existence, and it's amazing to watch. Rudolph and Wilson, for their part, are both great, though their roles essentially reduce them to one puzzled reaction after another.
That said, Judge never does pull all of his ideas together into a coherent whole - but at the same time, I have to wonder how much of that unevenness is due to the drastic cutting and re-cutting, and all the levels of interference from the studios and corporations. From the interview I read, Mike Judge comes off as too nice, or polite, a guy to fight effectively for his vision, which is a real pity. Because the original vision DOES show through here, even through the sad mess that's being (kinda) "released," and it's on a par with the dangerous vision of "Brazil."
This is beginning to remind me a lot of what almost happened to "Brazil," before Terry Gilliam (miraculously) was able to get his movie shown and appreciated in its original form. The studio seems to have succeeded here on both counts where they failed with "Brazil" - they've been able to successfully bury the movie, AND get it cut beyond recognition.
Maybe I'm missing something but I thought Idiocracy was fantastic. I can see how they could improve on it (the narration was a little strange) but I think it's the most entertaining movie I've seen this year.
It's got a heaping helping of dumb humor for sure but I think that's kind of the point and I don't understand how you can discredit a movie that expressly states that it is dumb for being dumb. Luke Wilson was hilarious, Maya Rudolph was passable and even Dax Shepherd did a good job. I really can't wait to see it again.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but the synopsis is the same as the classic 1951 science fiction story by C.M. Kornbluth, "The Marching Morons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Does Judge's film mention the connection?