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Idiocracy (2006)

Between WALL-E's mountains of trash, my just having finished reading the gruesomely compelling book Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream by Jason Fagone and the upcoming 4th of July holiday, Mike Judge's Idiocracy was on my mind. You probably didn't see Idiocracy; it was dumped, with minimal fanfare, into a handful of theaters after Judge's follow-up to Office Space turned out to be a blunt, brute satire of modern mores instead of a wiseacre-yet-ultimately-warm flick like Office Space was.

Idiocracy begins as Army librarian Joe Bauers is selected for an experimental program. The Army would like to hypothetically freeze the best of the best so they can be unthawed in times of crisis; first, though, they're going to test the process for a year, with Joe (who's described as average in every way) and Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute who's a little fuzzy on the concept. But the test is forgotten about -- until a trash-valanche unearths their cryro-pods 500 years in the future, where Joe soon discovers that a half-millennium of bad food, bad TV and bad choices have made everyone into a frickin' idiot.

In Judge's future America, the most popular program on TV is called Ow! My Balls!, revolving around the adventures of a man who is constantly struck in the junk. The number one film is Ass, a Warhol-esque 90-minute shot of, yes, someone's ass. Everyone wears corporate branding; water fountains spout the sports drink "Brawndo -- the Thirst Mutilator!" (Which has, in a demonstration of perverse reverse marketing, become a real product.) And everything is filthy and badly-run and the crops are dying (the President explains the stakes of the famine by noting that " ... we are running out of French fries and burrito coverings ...") and no one's smart enough to figure out why. Joe, whose average nature makes him a genius in comparison, is eventually named Secretary of the Interior by President Dwayne Camacho, an adult film-star and professional mixed martial arts champion played by Terry Crews with complete conviction.

Joe is tasked with ending the famine; Joe does so, only to learn that in a stupid world, simple solutions aren't so simple, winding up on the gladiatorial/judicial top-ranked program Rehabilitation as a defendant and contestant, with commercial breaks and sponsorships during his execution. ... And it's that pumped-up, bloated, excessive vision of tomorrow that came to mind as I read Horsemen of the Esophagus's descriptions of the world of competitive eating. In Idiocracy's future, the only food is fast food, and the only servings are "Mega-size"; it's all sci-fi satire, but reading Fagone's depiction of people eating chicken wings, hamburgers and hot dogs by the dozens in pursuit of cash and glory, it felt a little less sci-fi than I'd like.

Idiocracy's portrait of the future -- with jet-skis tooling around in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and the FDA and FCC both owned by a sports-drink company -- is a little hard to take, and as unsettling as it is uneven; like Woody Allen's Sleeper, Idiocracy tells us that tomorrow will be like today, but even more so, and good luck to the future if that's really the case. It's hard not to laugh, though, at the sight of a newscast being delivered by bodybuilders, or when a character notes he went to law school at Costco: "Luckily, my dad was an alumnus and he pulled a few strings." And fortunately, Wilson plays it straight -- Joe just wants to get back home, if he can, or at the very least try to improve things even a little bit. Wilson's a fairly slow-burning screen presence, which is precisely what makes him the movie's heart and soul -- tired, exasperated, hopeful, horrified, and leaving plenty of space for actors like Crews and Stephen Root and Justin Long to go over-the-top all around him.

The DVD of Idiocracy is no work of genius; there's a few deleted scenes, and that's about it. Presumably Judge wasn't asked to provide commentary by the studio that dumped the film, and it's doubtful he'd want to provide one after the way Idiocracy was summarily kicked to the curb. Even with that caveat, though, blunt, bracing comedies are hard to come by these days (thanks to an industry that considers The Love Guru an astute commentary on the way we live now), and I always find that the occasional spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down. Idiocracy's cold sneering mockery may be tough to take, but it's still got plenty of laughs; if you need something to half-watch as you lay dazed in a post-barbeque torpor this holiday weekend, you'll find Idiocracy has a light-yet-bitter flavor that'll freshen even the most overloaded palate.

posted by Don "Moses" Lerman  # 4:03 PM