This week, my wife and I went to see the new Mike Judge movie "
Idiocracy", starring Luke Wilson. The basic premise of the movie is that an "average guy", who is in reality a lazy loser by our standards, gets locked into suspended animation only to be awakened 400 years into the future, where mankind has devolved into mindless consumers incapable of even basic intelligence. Below I will give my thoughts on the film.
The Plot
As I said before, the plot is basically a light-hearted look at how American society could evolve if our consumer culture is allowed to spread and become even more rampant than it is today, combined with selective breeding of the dumbest people on the planet (e.g. people like Tom Cruise and Britney Spears.) It is a great plot and provides a lot of room for imaginative messages about our modern society on many levels.
However, the plot actually falls short of all that potential. A lot of time is spent showing how dumb the people of the future are by having them sit around watching TV shows like "Oww My Balls!" and an Oscar-winning movie called "Ass" There were a few amusing moments, but it was pretty dissapointing to see Mike Judge lean more towards his experience making "Beavis and Butthead" than his experience with "Office Space."
The Characters
The main character was disposable. Luke Wilson probably could have been replaced with just about anyone and it would have worked out the same. His brother probably would have done a better job in this case. The second main character, a whore portrayed by Maya Rudolph, was also disposable.
The only character that I really found all that amusing was President Camacho, played by Terry Crews. His character was an idiot, but also seemed crazy, which added some variety to the sea of idiocy.
Social Commentary
None of the scenes really stood out all that much, but here are a few things that I thought made some decent statements about our society.
- At the start of the movie, they discussed how stupid people are breeding (but did not make it a racial thing, which would have made me angry) but rather portrayed our obsession with people like American football players, and people who would be guests on Jerry Springer. The end result of the stupid people breeding is a society full of people like Larry the Cable Guy.
- On the other side, they ridiculed our professional, educated society who wait later and later to have children and often decide to have no children at all. I don't think that people should be forced to either have kids or not have kids, but our society does have problems. People who don't want to have kids and can't take care of them are not educated about safe sex, while people who do want to have kids are often pushed by their careers to not do it. As a society we need to have a discussion on this and work to solve the problems.
- On the Walmartification of society, there was a huge Costco in the movie that went on across the horizon. Anyone who has been to a Walmart can predict that as a future for our shopping. Just wait for Walmart to start selling cars.
- The election of a professional wrestler to the presidency is an indirect criticism of those who voted for Bush because, "he's the kind of guy I could have a drink with." President Camacho was completely incompetent and threatened people who opposed him. While meant as humor, it was fairly damning of the Bush administration's rhetoric.
- TV in the future will be even worse than it is today. I'm not yet 30 years old but I've observed the decline in the quality of content over the past few years. Television has simply become dumber, and filled with more commercials.
- Marketing was ridiculed well when the topic of elecrolytes came up in the movie. Everyone could spout off a slogan from a Gatorade-like drink how it has what people crave, because it had electrolytes. However, nobody knew what electrolytes are. As a result, they ridiculed water as being what you find in the toilet, while this gatorade stuff was what people drink. They used the gatorade to water their crops, which resulted in a dust bowl and starvation, since electrolytes are just salt.
- The previous thing also brought light to the fact that most Americans are incapable of survival. How many people here could actually plant and raise crops? How many know where Burger King's "chicken fries" come from, other than just saying "a chicken?" There is a lot to be said about the brain drain in our society not only in advanced fields but in the basic things that we need to survive.
Summary
Overall, the movie sucked. I try to make lemonade out of lemons, but this movie is maybe 2.5 stars out of 5 at the most. Rent it sometime when it's out on DVD and you have nothing better to do or see. It makes a few good criticisms of our overly capitalistic and anti-intellectual society, but it falls far short of what it could have been.