Movie Review Monday: Idiocracy
Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!
This week's film is the 2006 comedy Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph.
I remember seeing this movie in bits and pieces when it aired on Comedy Central back in the day, and now, ten years after it's initial release, I finally sat down and watched the whole thing straight through with my partner*. Going in, I knew Idiocracy was a cult movie with a very specific point of view on the world (short version; stupid people are going to end up procreating more than smart people, dooming the world), which is a fun premise to be sure. Unfortunately, it starts to get pretty tired after a while and I ended up being disappointed in the end.
(*I rented it from Amazon Video since it is not available to stream instantly anywhere at the moment.)
We follow Joe Bauers (Wilson) as he and Rita (Rudolph) awaken from a military experiment gone awry, leaving them stranded in a future populated entirely of idiots. The movie takes this term and concept to it's comedic extremes, and Wilson's character, a literal average Joe from his own time, is considered a genius in this era of buffoons. He must try to help save them and also figure out a way back to his own time.
Like I said before, the premise runs dry by the end for me. In a weird, convoluted way, it is a dumb movie about smart people dealing with dumb people. I would have hoped for something with a little more substance, but what results is a bunch of sight gags and overuse of the word "retarded" in a derogatory way (or fag, or queer for that matter), which certainly dates the movie even in the ten years since it's release, since I feel like most people get that we shouldn't use that term so readily anymore. Maybe I expected too much from a movie called Idiocracy, but I have seen better smartly stupid comedy many times before, so it seems fair to hold this to a bit of a higher standard, especially given the epic scale of this comedy premise.
I'd recommend this movie with reservations. It is silly, but still funny at times, but just know going in that it is nothing more than its premise really. Don't expect for some great moral or lesson or message or any deeper meaning from this movie other than that people should try to do good (it really never gets much beyond that).