July 19, 2009: Idiocracy
I am a longtime fan of Office Space, the first live-action feature film from writer-director Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead fame. Released in the summer of 1999, it perfectly captured both the drab life of the office-bound computer software professional in the late 1990s, and the desire to have the money to escape from the working world and do “nothing”. Both of these really spoke to me at the time since I was one of those computer software guys and because I’ve always wanted to not have to work. I will always cherish the irony that I actually took off with a co-worker in the middle of the work day to see a matinee showing of this ode to the über-slacker attitude. Idiocracy (2006) is Judge’s follow-up feature, which I had seen once before, though not in the theatre.
I have been wanting to revisit Idiocracy again for quite a while, since I was severely disappointed in it when I first saw it. I suppose my expectations were very high, and that’s often a recipe for disaster. So I wanted to see whether Idiocracy was as bad as I remembered it, and knowing that Mike Judge’s next film, Extract, was to be released this fall, I wanted to re-immerse myself in his world.
Idiocracy is about a man and woman, hapless guinea pigs in a military experiment, who are put into suspended animation for one year, however, when military disorganization takes over and the boxes they are in are unintentionally discarded, the two end up instead being suspended for 500 years. Waking up in this new world, after dozens of generations of stupid people breeding recklessly and smart people never finding the right time to start a family, everyone they encounter is unbelievably dumb and the world’s problems include a gigantic tower of dumped garbage next to each city, and crops dying due to being “watered” with a sports beverage instead of, uh, water.
Well, it was much better this time around. I think the combination of having my expectations suitably adjusted, eagerly anticipating the bits I really liked, and the knowledge of my usual misperceptions of pacing which are corrected on a second viewing of a film, helped me to go in knowing that I was going to find this experience to be some combination of enjoyable and educational. The film has definite weaknesses, including inconsistent writing and some paper-thin acting by leads Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Granted, Rudolph didn’t seem so bad this time and her screen time was far more limited than I recalled, but Luke Wilson really doesn’t hold this film together as the lead character, which I suppose is one of the major failings. This time around, I found myself more jarred by the logical inconsistencies in the script. The whole premise is that everyone has become stupid and as a result society has more or less collapsed, but there are still insidious corporations running things, including heavily automated police forces and high technology and barcodes tattooed on everyone’s wrists, with no explanation about who is actually designing, building and running these systems. Is it believable that the few remaining smart people in the world would happen to be evil but also content to exploit and control all the rest of humanity from behind the curtain? It’s certainly true that there are people who would do that, and some of them are smart, but most smart people tend to lean more towards the public good. This was my major complaint about Idiocracy this time around.
Overall, I can’t recommend this film. It’s got a few great moments, like the restaurant name changes and the big garbage piles and the whole Brawndo vs. water debate and the fact that the Oscar-winner for Best Picture is called “Ass: The Movie”, but the story doesn’t hold together, and Mike Judge can do much better. I look forward to Extract, but with low to middling expectations.
Weak follow-up from respected cult auteur.
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