Idiocracy
(Fox Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2006)
review by Head Cheeze

One would think that the creator of “Beavis and Butthead” and the cult-classic “Office Space”, would have little trouble getting a film in theaters, but, for Mike Judge, something funny happened on the way to the multiplex. Fox, for reasons that have a few folks shaking their heads, opted to bypass theaters with Judge’s latest film, “Idiocracy”, sending it directly to DVD with little to no fanfare. While a move like that would certainly call the quality of any film into question, it’s even more alarming when said film is the product of the creator of one of the biggest pop-culture phenomenons of the late 20th century. This has got to be an awful flick, right?

Not by a longshot.

Luke Wilson stars as Joe Bowers, an extremely unmotivated career soldier who looks forward to spending the rest of his military career manning the desk of a library. As one of his superiors points out, when Joe is presented with the option to “lead, follow, or get out of the way”, he chooses the latter, which, to such a benign human being as himself, seems like a perfectly logical thing to do. Of course, the Army disagrees, and opts to “volunteer” Joe for a top-secret study in human hibernation, which will see him frozen for one year, along with a prostitute (don’t ask) named Rita (played by Saturday Night Live’s lovely Maya Rudolph). When the scientist in charge of the project gets arrested for starting a prostitution ring (told you not to ask), the Army pulls the plug on the experiment, bulldozing the laboratory, and burying Joe and Rita’s sleep pods.

Fast forward five hundred years to a future where garbage heaps tower over cities, the most popular show on television is called “Ow My Balls!”, and the English language has been replaced by a combination of Ebonics, Latino slang, and stoner dude-speak. Joe awakens to a world in which he is now the most intelligent man alive; a prospect that both terrifies him and awakens something within him that he never knew was there. Rita, meanwhile, finds that smart hookers can make a killing off of this new breed of man.

Much like Judge’s Office Space, Idiocracy is a film that features the sort of low-key oddball humor that screams “cult comedy”, and it’s for this reason that I sort of agree with Fox’s decision to bypass theaters. Idiocracy just isn’t the sort of comedy that thrives in that environment, and that’s a compliment, really. With the exception of a notable few, blockbuster comedies rarely "work" for me, especially in repeated viewings. You can have your “Wedding Crashers” and “Old School”’s; I’ll take a slow-burn, quietly funny flick like Idiocracy over them any day. And, as a bonus, the film works on a whole other level, as it’s a very clever bit of science fiction farce, with some goofily pleasant visual effects, and a concept that is as intelligent as it is funny.

Sadly, Fox didn’t just skip a theatrical release for Idiocracy; they nearly gave it a bare bones release, offering merely a couple of deleted scenes and nothing more, lending credence to theories that the studio just downright hated this movie. Just the same, I don’t think that anyone involved in Idiocracy should let it get them down; in a few years, when it’s the cult-classic it is destined to be, they’ll be rewarded with the adoration they deserve.

Hopefully, that’s when we’ll get the DVD release this flick deserves.