Every week, Shelf Life sees Tom White select and talk about a movie that lives on his DVD shelf, one he thinks we should all see.
There's been many different dystopian futures depicted on the big screen down through the years: futures where apes rule, robots rule, or society has just up and failed to the point where leather has become an acceptable piece of clothing. But it took Mike Judge in 2006 with Idiocracy to present us with a future that is both hilarious and terrifyingly possible at the same, a future where the dumb have inherited the Earth. The idea of a future where the average I.Q. of the entire planet has plummeted is pretty high concept, but in Judge's hands, it delivers one of the smartest and best comedies of recent years, one that has gone criminally unseen.
The future world of Idiocracy is one that is an extrapolation of what is happening today. Like any good sci-fi, the movie uses the future to comment on the present, and Judge, and co-writer Etan Cohen (not brother of Joel, but co-writer of Tropic Thunder and Men in Black 3) makes some big statements, masquerading as low brow humour, on the media, celebrity, and technology obsessed culture of seven years ago. In fact, they were pretty ahead of their time, as this culture only seemed in its infancy at the time Idiocracy was made. In the year 2505, the simple act of disposing of garbage has become a problem too big to properly solve, mountains of trash dominating the landscape. Ads now dominate t.v. shows, running constantly as banners around the edges of our t.v.'s. Big business now runs the government, and the sex industry has become part of the main stream, with Starbucks heavily implied to have become a nationwide chain of brothels. Humanity hasn't fared any better, becoming mindless drones unable to think for themselves (at some point in the future, the slogan of a major energy drink became so compelling that it replaced drinking water), and are intolerable to any sign of intelligence to the point of violence. Into this, stumbles Luke Wilson's entirely average Joe, who, along with Maya Rudolph's Rita, is the subject of a suspended animation experiment gone wrong, and becomes the smartest man on the planet. Wilson is the perfect everyman, our p.o.v. character for this strange new world, and much of the fun of the movie is seeing him react to how head slappingly stupid this future is.
With Idiocracy, Judge pulls off what he has done before with the likes of Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, and Office, taking a concept quite simple and squeezing it for all it's comedy potential. The movie moves forward at a break neck speed, with each scene packing in gag upon gag. The evolution of Fuddruckers is one highlight, and the movie requires repeat viewing to spot all the jokes. Judge also assembled quite the cast, with the likes of Stephen Root, Dax Shepard, and Thomas Haden Church providing a strong comedy backbone, but it's Terry Crews who steals the show. As President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Comacho (also five time Ultimate Smackdown champion and porn superstar), this is Crews at the top of his game, making the most of every scene he's in, and delivering one of the most unforgettable roles of his career.
It's understandable that you haven't seen Idiocracy. After having it's release date delayed indefinitely, it was dumped into cinemas without any fanfare, no critic screenings, and a seemingly non-existant ad campaign, before finding an audience on DVD. Positive reviews helped its profile grow until cult status beckoned. Its popularity even saw Crews dust off the President Comacho costume for a series of Funny or Die videos during the 2012 Presidential Elections in the U.S. And now that you know of its existence, I urge you to seek out. This is definitely one comedy, which doubles as smart and funny social commentary, that deserves to live on your shelf.
