Idiocracy is the definitive dystopia of our times -- in that it accurately describes all that those other movies1 have failed. And I suspect that the main reason for this is Mike Judge's particular talent at portraying idiots. I mean, it's in the title, isn't it?!
Just to be clear, I used to watch Beavis and Butthead in my childhood and I still get a good laugh out of it now and then, just as I do out of South Park or whatever. This is, I believe, the only way satire could keep up with the times: by taking a good piss on any and everything out there. But anyways, I watched Office Space and I have no recollection of it whatsoever2; and as far as Mike Judge goes, that's where I'm going to draw a line. Regardless, Idiocracy reeks of Mike Judgeness, mainly because the vast majority of its characters are accurate replicas of Beavis and Butthead, only without the funny hair... and all this by mere virtue of not needing to be much at all in order to be a Beavis or a Butthead. Which at the end of the day is the whole point of this story.
The whole structure of Idiocracy is built as a Gulliver in The Land of The Stupid3: some average guy who's "Not Sure" arrives in the future and finds out that by mere virtue of r-selection, civilization went to shit. Now, I know that things could (and will) get a whole lot worse, but it really didn't take us five whole centuries to get to this point in history, did it? So I guess Mike Judge was optimistic, or otherwise he didn't want to alienate his audience too much.
Other than that, the degree of realism is mind-blowing: you got "AI" running everything and nothing works as it should, to the point where you wonder how the fuck can anything work at all; everything is produced for the purpose of appealing to the senses, which makes sense, because; everyone and their dog is basically a soulless husk of a NPC, unable to think for themselves and thus having to adhere to "rules and regulations", as any good citizen would. In short, the world is fucked and only a deus ex machina from the distant "civilized" past -- y'know, when Jedi wore lightsabers -- could save it from its eventual demise.
Yes, make no mistake, you're exactly "as" stupid as those folks, the difference is merely in degree, not in kind. And you're heading that exact path, irrespective of whether you're a mega-mathematician or a "dumb ape". "Idiocracy is not a movie, it's a documentary", they said, and fuck me, they were absolutely right. How can you laugh at piss-poor folks killing their crops with Gatorade, when you're eating fucking McDonald's made out of roaches? And how can you make fun of the dumb dork who paid to wait for a whore to give it to him when the OnlyFans business is going so well? Oh, believe you me, it's gonna take a whole lot of time to get those whores to do some painting!
The only thing that distances Idiocracy from a dystopia is its hopeful ending: hey, lookie, folks are stupid, but now at least they have something to work towards, they only need an enlightened leader to lead 'em stray sheep towards the right path. This makes the whole thing look quite biblical, except they forgot to tell us that Not Sure and Rita eventually die, only to be replaced by a long line of dumb fucks who'll fuck things up for another century or two until people figure their shit out.
Anyways, I have no particular opinion of Luke Wilson, but I think Terry Crews does a great President Stupid, so that his performance alone makes the whole thing a delight to watch. The imagery is so horribly kitschy, making it a sort of "Aesthetik des Hablichen" of the time, but definitely fitting within the aesthetics of late-2000s movies. The soundtrack doesn't stand out in any way whatsoever, at least not to my ear.
Overall I'm sure that Idiocracy is hard to swallow for the general public and that some of the asslicking snobs out there will consider it "outdated". When it's anything but that, and I doubt that it will be for the next few decades at least.
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By the way, last weekend I watched "Brazil's spiritual successor", i.e. Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem, of the Twelve Monkeys trilogy, or whatever it's called. It's a superb work of art, which will however have to remain a footnote to my review of Idiocracy. And just to top this off, a couple more weeks ago I watched Dark City, which idem; and furthermore, I had wanted to review everybody's favourite Severance by Ben Stiller at some point, but I suppose it didn't really stick to me.
The problem with all these works, however great they are, is that they manage to miss the most important points that Idiocracy approaches simply and masterfully. Talk about myopia, huh? ↩
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I suppose I oughta review it sometime. ↩
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Which incidentally is also the main premise behind Futurama. By the way, have you ever looked at Futurama as a dystopia? Or really, what did you think of the suicide machines? ↩