REVIEW - Idiocracy (brought to you by Carl's Jr.)

Directed by Mike Judge
Written by Mike Judge & Etan Cohen
Rated R - 84 Minutes
Released Sept. 3, 2006

As a disclaimer to this review, I will admit that this was a movie I really, really wanted to like. Sadly, Idiocracy wasted no time in throwing me under the bus. I suppose as a critic I shouldn't watch any film with expectations or preconceived notions, but I am not a professional critic, I'm at best a freelance wise ass. The last film Mike Judge made was Office Space which isn't so much a movie as an institution, in some places a religion. With that in mind please, please forgive me if I truly expected to show Idiocracy my O-face.

This is a film with a lot of great ideas. There aren't enough movies that have the balls to envision a future where stupidity reigns, which in my wholehearted opinion is indeed the likeliest of scenarios. My only beef with a society like that is it doesn't deserve to be saved, so the cornball ending presented here only served to irk me more.

Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph play a soldier and a hooker (can you guess who plays which?) who are frozen and forgotten, only to wake up 500 years later in a landscape where mountain ranges are unimaginable heaps of refuse and television's most popular show is about a guy who spends his life on the receiving end of the worst kinds of testicular punishment.

The moment we "arrive" in the future, Judge dials up the satire with the heaviest hand he could possibly find. I am all for satire, but it's really hard to do well and if a filmmaker doesn't play their cards right the effort can get lost in a preachy zealous jumble. At least he tried.

I can see why Mike Judge made this film. Living in America today without your rose-colored lenses can easily induce fits of rage and frustration. It's gotten to the point where looking away from one atrocity brings twelve more into focus. Idiocracy reeks with this frustration and for that I applaud the effort, despite the result. I might have appreciated this film more if it was 84 minutes of Mr. Judge screaming into a pillow.

The ideas that put this film in motion were lofty, but in the end the execution is where it suffers. It's amazing Mr. Judge was able to secure funds to make it at all, considering that a fair amount probably came from the kind of people he blasts with this narrative. For that Mike Judge, I salute you.

Principles and intentions aside, Idiocracy is not a good movie, a fact that wounds me to say. I will stick with Mike Judge, he's done me right more often than wrong. I'll watch anything else he throws my way. Besides, anyone who puts Maya Rudolph looking that sexy in a movie will always have my adoration.

On the Mr. Blunderson ratings scale, Idiocracy receives a "Meh."