Movie Review

Idiocracy (2006)

A guy and gal with average to low intelligence are cryogenically stored in a suspended state for what is supposed to be a year-long experiment by the military. Unforeseen circumstances take over, however, and the pair awaken 500 years in the future. They find that due to the worldwide over-population of idiots, and the general degradation of culture, they are the smartest people alive.

The United States is headed by former professional wrassler and p*on film star, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. A single Costco covers an entire county, and shoppers can get everything there, including a law degree. Emergency room triage consists of a panel of graphical buttons designed for illiterate clerks to push so that recorded diagnoses blare over loudspeakers.

For The Onion’s A.V. Club, Nathan Rabin wrote “A perfectly cast Luke Wilson stars as a quintessential everyman who hibernates for centuries and wakes up in a society so degraded by insipid popular culture, crass consumerism, and rampant anti-intellectualism that he qualifies as the smartest man in the world. Corporations cater unashamedly to the primal needs of the lowest common denominator—Starbucks now traffics in handjobs as well as lattes—and the English language has devolved into a hilarious patois of hillbilly, Ebonics, and slang. Idiocracy's dumb-ass dystopia suggests a world designed by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, a world where the entire populace skirts the fine line separating mildly retarded from really fucking stupid, and where anyone displaying any sign of intelligence is derided as a fag.”

Its lean-over-your-knees-and-gasp-for-air funny, but once it was over I remembered a real-life brush with Idiocracy I had a few years back. My employer contacted a government-run program for at-risk youth to have local disadvantaged teens work during the summer in our building. In order to make sure we, the employers, could work “effectively” with the teens, we were required to attend a day of government sponsored training.

The trainer at one point during the day advised us that we were not to “use big words” when speaking to our future employees as this might cause them to have a crisis of self-esteem while in our care. Ladies and gentlemen – I had to literally grip the sides of my chair and bite my tongue in order to prevent myself from launching from my seat to interrogate this .GOV flunky as to when and how she had decided that talking down to people was a blessing to those so graced and a warm, longed-for reassurance of equality among morons.

But I’ve begun to rant . . .

I’m warning you now – if you have no sense of humor this movie will offend the monocle right off your face. A woman so PC she assuredly uses only one square of t.p. per potty trip told me about this movie, yet it is one of the most anti-pc films I’ve seen . . . . perhaps ever. Advertising in this future version of Umerica has devolved to “If you don't smoke Tarryltons... Fuck You!” The Violence Channel and the Masturbation Channel are two of the most popular on air in the year 2505.

But I laughed harder than I remember laughing for years. And 24 hours later throw-away lines and scenes are still making me chuckle.