Idiocracy

I saw Office Space for the first time last year and I believed it was a bit overrated (although people swear to me up and down you have to watch it a few times to truly "get" it). Idiocracy however lived up to the hype immediately.

It's a funny movie but I don't think it gets enough credit for how scary it is. Out of all of the dystopian horror futures sci-fi films have posited over the years, this is truly the most horrific because it's the most likely to happen. And the movie had a LOT more believable examples of cause and effect than say, Soylent Green or Planet Of The Apes. And though the movie was made in 2005, the scary thing is it feels more relevant today than it did then. And that shows that its idea of people getting dumber is right. We thought global warming hit us before we knew it? Idiocracy became a reality 500 years early in 2016. I mean, Trump once hosted a Playboy video, so he IS technically the first porn star President.

One thing I noticed that really ties it into current events is that the stupid people of the future aren't innocent or well-intentioned. They are freaking MEAN. Which is the problem with our stupid people currently. Mater from Cars is the biggest lie a film ever told people about how harmless and innocent stupidity is. The fact that John Lasseter turned out to be a bad guy is less surprising to me while he was always talking up how great Mater was. Real, actual stupid people, and yes, I guess you can include Larry the Cable Guy here, are destructive and awful. They mess things up when things can least afford to be messed up.

The tag was sort of funny, but I guess outside of Marvel movies, I don't much like tags. It felt like it was teasing a sequel that not only would never come, but was never necessary.

I like that the movie had a sort of happy and hopeful ending, undercut that the idiot Frito had 32 stupid kids. And it's not something you can fight against. Everybody turning stupid is not a problem that can actually be fixed. I'm glad John and Rita were granted a happy ending of sorts. The rest of the world is still doomed.

And who are their kids supposed to mate with? I don't actually like thinking about that specific thing.

I think Fox sabotaged the film's release in theaters because of the shots it took at Fox News. And knowing that makes the movie seem brave. I always got the impression from both King Of The Hill and Beavis And Butt-Head that Mike Judge was a conservative. His shots against them in this movie are surprisingly sharp anyways. Mike Judge's politics shall always remain a total mystery to me. I don't always understand the messages he's sending. Unlike King Of The Hill, this was a good one.

I want to point out that besides Terry Crews, most of the cast they got for the idiots were all extremely unattractive people who would never be able to be cast in any other film but this one. It feels to me the film is engaging in a bit of looksism by suggesting defective genes don't just make stupid people, they make ugly ones too. But again, Judge's politics are always impossible to pin down, so who knows why he did that.

Earl Mann did a great job as The Narrator. And yes, the reason the movie is both effective and frightening is it's not just totally believable. As far as I'm concerned, it's the most likely scenario. Unless global warming kills us all, I think a world filled with mean and stupid people is what we are headed towards. So believing this, maybe the stupidest person of our era was actually Gene Roddenberry. This movie is far easier to believe and rationalize than Star Trek ever was.

Funny and scary. A brilliant and biting satire. *****.