[lbo-talk] "Idiocracy"

[Carl Remick]

I'm a big fan of Mike Judge's TV show "King of the Hill" and was surprised 
to see that 20th Century Fox has decided to go virtually direct-to-video 
with Judge's new movie "Idiocracy" (after keeping it in the can for two 
years) and not give it much of a theatrical release.  The NY Times suggests 
Fox didn't like the movie because of a supposed anti-populist tone -- the 
NYT in fact describes it as "a cautionary tale about low-intelligence 
dysgenics (essentially, overbreeding among the stupid)."  
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/business/09online.html>
I haven't seen the movie, but based on the Hollywood Reporter's review 
(excerpted below), the film sounds more anti-capitalist than anti-populist.

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Idiocracy

By Sheri Linden

In his various "Beavis and Butt-Head" projects and "Office Space," Mike 
Judge has proved himself a keen-eyed observer of the ascendancy of 
mediocrity. His second live-action feature, "Idiocracy," is often stingingly 
funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping 
ground. Perhaps the incisive satire cuts too close to home, with its 
dystopian vision of a world peopled by inarticulate, TV-addicted dolts who 
eagerly throw themselves under any and every set of corporate wheels that 
steamroll toward them. Perhaps low test-screening results reflect the very 
dumbing down the film laments. ...

Luke Wilson brings a perfect blinking blandness to the film's unlikely hero, 
Joe Bauers, a soldier the military chooses for its Human Hibernation 
Project. Remarkable only for how unwaveringly average he is, Joe hits the 
median on every chart and eagerly submits himself to a yearlong deep freeze. 
His fellow experiment subject and potential mate is prostitute Rita (an 
occasionally funny, bimbo-tough Maya Rudolph).

As fate and short attention span would have it, the Army base conducting the 
test closes amid scandal, soon to be replaced by a Fuddruckers. With the 
scientific community focused on more pressing matters of hair loss and 
penile dysfunction, Joe and Rita are forgotten for 500 years, until the 
Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 releases them from their coffin-like 
chambers into a world of raging stupidity. Barcode-tattooed citizens subsist 
on buckets o' fat while watching the Masturbation Network, the Violence 
Channel or, in a bold bit of reverse product placement, the Fox News 
Network, whose anchors are wrestling-circuit celebs. The president (a very 
funny Terry Alan Crews) is a former porn star and smackdown champ.

In a world where language has degenerated into grunting, monosyllabic 
profanity, Joe's use of grammatical sentences marks him as "faggy." It also 
makes him the smartest man on the planet, enlisted by President Camacho and 
his sharp-as-marbles cabinet to save the country from its crop and French 
fries crises.

... "Idiocracy" hits the bull's-eye with its portrayal of a brand-obsessed 
USA, where Costco is a city unto itself and the supreme value is market 
share. ...

<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003087491>

Carl