"It's got electrolytes!"
Added 11/22/2009
How do you do a satire about the increasing stupidity of people? In other words, how do you do a documentary about modern society?
It isn't really true that people are becoming less intelligent, but rather that they are increasingly more-poorly educated. By educated, I mean being aware of the world around them and what's going on in it, especially in areas outside their jobs, and beyond the borders of their country. (You can blame the revival of religious fundamentalism for part of this. If you know you're going to be saved, why worry about what's going on at this level of existance?)
I've ruined my own life, and am, in many respects, am an insufferably stupid person. But it was only the election of George W. Bush that made me realize just how stupid human beings are. This is a man not much brighter than the people of "Idiocracy", ignorant, uneducated, and seemingly proud of it.
I have little interest in rock, but was wildly impressed with the way "Beavis & Butt-head" so unflinchingly catalogued the decline of Western civilization (or American society, at least). "Idiocracy" nicely expands Mike Judge's growing catalog of that decline.
Idiocracy's conceit is that, as stupid people are more likely to have children than intelligent people, the world's population will inevitably move in the direction of total dunderheadedness. This is not genetically plausible (ever heard of "reversion to the mean"?), and it's contradicted by the presence of a lot of high-technology hardware, but no mind. The point is that the idea isn't as important as what you do with it. And Judge does plenty.
The richness of Judge's "confederacy of dunces" is striking. Particularly notable is the utter vulgarity of social behavior, as if one of the fundamental elements of stupidity is a lack of respect and common courtesy. And anyone who speaks clearly is a fag.
Judge's direction is spot-on. It would have been so easy to play the characters as caricatures, but our future selves are believably stupid and self-absorbed. There's never any sense that we're seeing actors /pretending/ to be dumb (qv, of Jack Nicholson in "Prizzi's Honor" or Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man"). Dax Shepard, as Frito, Joe's incompetent attorney, gives a truly remarkable performance that, in a just world, would have gotten him an Oscar nomination.
At a terse 84 minutes, "Idiocracy" ends before wearing out its welcome. And Judge's dystopia is so richly imagined that you'll have to watch two or three times, your finger poised over the pause button, to catch everything.
It is no surprise that Fox showed this film in five theaters, then pulled it. Granted, preview audiences hated it. Does that prove anything? Well, it shows that Fox management is even more stupid than the preview audienes.
My highest recommendation. Unreseveredly recommended.
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Although I fear the premise for this movie is true the movie itself wasn't worth watching.
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The Sad Truth
Added 11/11/2009
The sad truth is that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket (whatever a hand-basket is,) and here we sit watching it go. All the while we are thinking that someone else is taking care of it so that it doesn't happen. But who are we to rely on...really? The government? The avaricious corporate executives and the ever-greedy companies they represent? The car companies? The power companies? Wall Street advisers? Nope, none of them. Because this, my friends, is a world of self-indulgence. Look at the salaries of baseball players, and then try to argue otherwise. Look at how much a large portion of "no talent" actors (like Miley Cyrus) bring home while the vast majority of the U.S. population live vicariously through them, and then tell me that this economy isn't screwed up nine ways to blue hell!
"Idiocracy" paints a picture. A picture of reality that is probably closer in the future than the 500 years depicted in the movie. It is a picture of a world that has fallen apart...fallen apart due to greed, insecurity, vanquished self-esteem, and pure idiocy! Through all the funny stuff here, i.e.; site gags, blank looks, and witty quips, the underlying message shines like a beacon on a moonless night. This movie is a valuable lesson just as much as it is a comedy.
Heed the message.
Love the movie.
FIVE STARS! *****
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Sadly it isn't taking five hundred years
Added 10/30/2009
Imagine a world where the government goes in debt to destroy perfectly good cars. Imagine a world where the government tries to take over healthcare and when the over-a-thousand-pages bill fails to gain traction, they replace it with a bill just shy of two thousand pages and think it's an improvement, and we can't read it to save our lives, even though we may have to some day. Imagine utopia created by printing money. OOPS, that's what our federal government is doing!
Imagine a city where they paint bike trail signs on the pavement down the middle of arterial streets to encourage bikers (the pedal variety) to bike in with traffic. OOPS, that's where I live!
Imagine a school system where the teachers, who get paid in US money and have the American flag flying over the building, have the kindergarteners singing John Lennon's "Imagine" and imagining their country away. OOPS, that's reality for me!
I really belive that about half our citizenry simply doesn't know what it takes to have a civilization, and they don't care that they don't know. And a huge segment of those people actually are stupid enough to romanticize how great it would be if it all went away.
So, after that rant I'll say that even with the crass, vulgar, and potty humor that I usually don't gravitate towards I just had to sigh and think "right on" when this movie was over. It just seems to be coming true even more quickly than Mike Judge imagined. Maybe more like 2105.
I expected a low budget movie, so I was rather pleasantly suprised at the matte paintings and some genuine attempts to show what our society would look like after a few more centuries of decline. Basically, a culture of people with the intellectual capacity of cave-people running on the last fumes of the civilization they inherited. So, the sets and effects were actually better than I expected, and the actors did pretty fair job too. And, there are enough sight gags and things that go by really fast that it would stand up to a repeat viewing.
This isn't a perfect movie or even close, but I'm surprised it didn't get a wider audience, but was rather an anomaly that I just stumbed into and decided to watch. If only it wasn't so close to being a documentary.
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Sometimes the Truth is Funny
Added 10/24/2009
What can you say about this movie? Is it satire if it is really true? As someone who works on the Labor and Delivery ward, there is more truth in this film than most people want to believe. Funny movie! Watch it and see where the world is heading.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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Happy in Miami
Added 11/4/2009
Loved this comdey. Several of the actors in this movie, were in the movie "Waiting".
Very funny movie. I would recommend it highly. As always, great service from Amazon.
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GUT BUSTING FUNNY!
Added 10/2/2009
I love Dax to begin with and he plays a great role in this movie about prisons. It's hilarious! A must see comedy!
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Really funny movie!
Added 6/15/2009
I love this movie and I can't get enough of it. I was really excited to see Amazon had it so cheap! I've been meaning to own it for a while. There are so many amazing actors in it and the writing is perfect, making it the perfect comedy for anyone with a morbid sense of humor!
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