FROM THE CREATOR OF ‘OFFICE SPACE’ COMES MIKE JUDGE’S IDIOCRACY
IDIOCRACY – The DVD FILM Review
While it’s a commonly known fact that ‘art imitates life’, fewer people realize that the reverse is also true, if you look for it, and can discern it. Take ‘Superman’ for instance. We all know the ‘coming here from another planet’ part of the story but what most people don’t know is the ‘why’. Superman’s father, Jor-EL, found that Krypton was going to explode as a result of their advanced civilization and went before their U.N. style Congress and to warn them, and they, like George Dubya, said it was all conjecture with no proof. Supes’ dad built a tiny rocket for the baby’s escape, because they, like us, didn’t venture much into Outer Space. Most of the world has some part of the advanced global culture America has produced and Mother Nature is reacting to our strains of technology with strange weather and a hole in the Ozone layer, so far. That would be the end of any imitation similarities if the just released DVD film, IDIOCRACY, is an indicator of our future.
When this film was released to only six cities and with no fanfare, my Spidey sense went off and I wrote a piece about this, to keep my readers ‘up on the downlow’ (see here). Having just purchased this political comedy at Sam’s Club, I can see my Spidey sense was correct-a-mundo. It was even given an ‘R’ to help limit viewing because I’ve seen harder ‘Simpson’ shows. ‘Wag The Dog’ got more play but it only dealt with politics. This movie deals with commercialism, aka ‘the hand that feeds us’ and therein lies the difference. In this era of double spin, it seems status quo to trumpet a film like ‘Borat!’ which reinforces the TV crowd’s mindset of the Taliban Muslim and got wide release with rave reviews, while a comedy for the thinking person goes unnoticed.
Luke Wilson puts in his best ‘Aw Shucks’ persona as an ‘average Joe’, so average that the U.S. Army, he is an enlisted man, assigns him to be part of an experiment in hibernation. The experiment goes awry and he wakes up 500 years later to a world that makes ‘Mad Max’ look like a swim shoot. Thanks to centuries of commercialism, Mankind has ‘dumbed’ itself down until Wilson’s character is the smartest man in the world, and for them the smartest man in history. Society has changed a lot, needless to say, and Mike Judge stuffs as many political zingers and sight gags as possible without going over the top into the cheese zone. There are some good laughs and the story is plausible enough and moves along without getting too sappy or preachy. The plot twist at the very end is a nice touch like that hidden bonus track you get on many CDs if you play them all the way though.
The reason this film was shut out of wider distribution is it gives you a ‘why’ they mess up on your fast food order, or you never get the right auto part the first time you go in to the store. If you are a person who ponders of such things now that they piss test everywhere, you may be witnessing a possible future that’s scary but funny. A definite demitasse for the coffeehouse intellectual coming in at only 87 minutes, so sip it with a smile and enjoy it with friends.