Idiocracy

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Comedy, SciFi/Fantasy
• Release Date: 2006-09-01 Limited
• Running Time: 84 min.
• Director: Mike Judge
• Cast: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Sheperd, Sara Rue, Terry Crews, Tony Campos, David Herman, Stephen Root, Brad Jordan, Mitch Baker
• Producer: Mike Judge, Michael Rotenberg, Elysa Koplovitz
• Writer: Mike Judge, Etan Cohen
• Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The strange irony of 20th-Century Fox offloading this new (yet long-completed) Mike Judge comedy without screenings, trailers, posters, or marketing is that, in the IQ-obliterated future that Judge’s movie envisions, the biggest evil in the collective sanding of our brains is arguably advertising. Luke Wilson plays a present-day average Joe who’s experimentally frozen by the Army and forgotten about until he’s accidentally awakened in 2505, where he discovers a slovenly, sophomoric, masturbatory, junk food–engorged world of mental midgets who first imprison him and then make him Secretary of the Interior once they realize he’s probably the smartest man in the world. It’s an eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too concept--stupid humor as dystopian satire--but Idiocracy wears out its dumb-and-dumbest playbook early on. When we see CGI cityscapes of neglected, barren skyscrapers and monuments tilting, it’s somehow appropriate: The movie just feels off. If you crave a lively and funny trek through the farcical possibilities of unchecked dimwit power, Judge is still your guy--just go rent Beavis and Butt-head Do America instead. (Robert Abele)