Beavis and Butt-Head do America

Idiocracy

I was looking forward to Idiocracy for a long time. Some no-holds-barred social criticism and satire from Mr. Mike Judge, of Office Space, King of the Hill, and Beavis and Butt-Head fame. (honestly, I never really liked KOTH, but I like Judge.

So the premise is simple, Luke Wilson is forzen for 500 years and wakes up after humanity has de-evolved to a point where everyone basically acts like Beavis and Butt-Head. The satire is over-the-top and vicious: the reason for the de-evolution is laid out in an opening segment where a hillbilly family tree is played out and juxtaposed with a couple who are successful and intelligent but put off having kids until it is too late. The idea is that we have undermined the theory of evolution by making it easy to survive and breed, so that the be willing to reproduce (or stupid enough to not exercise control over your reproduction) is all it takes to succeed on an evolutionary level. Technology develops to the point where it does everything for people, and only the most basic skills are needed to function. Essentially, things are made idiot-proof and that is exactly what we get.

The concept is great, but as a movie it is flawed. It suffers from 'good idea but doesn't translate to the screen' syndrome. So along with the biting satire we have to endure a bunch of groin-kicks and the silly plot to find a way home and/or save people from being killed by the ignorant savages. There is ample opportunity for gags and not-so-subtle jabs at our culture, and they are what save the movie from being a disappointment after the back-of-the-box concept is over. Watching the characters interact was painful and boring. most of the dialog in this movie sucked. The point made by the omnipotent voice-over narrator that language had deteriorated to a mixture of hillbilly and ghetto slang and rudimentary grunts was funny, and occasionally the outlandish statements got a laugh, but when it needed to advance the plot it was just bad. Of course, there was no better way to do it. As I said above, the movie was interesting but flawed from the beginning. It makes an interesting point, but it isn't one you can build a compelling story around.

No, the jokes. sight-gags, and parody's of the decline in our own culture is what makes this movie worth watching. Taking the stupidity of reality TV, the sexualization of advertising, and the laziness and selfishness of our times and carrying them to absurd lengths provides the entertainment that caries this movie. Luke Wilson, and the other principle actors, have very little to add. It's good on the way SNL or MAD magazine is good.


I looked for a good picture of one of the many funny scenes and couldn't find anything but a movie poster of the President and Luke riding on a big bike, so here is what I did find, a review on the Onion that said everything I meant to, only better, because I am rushed to catch up on my movies and also possibly sick:

Idiocracy is an unrepentant satire, a genre George S. Kaufman famously defined as "what closes Saturday night." Idiocracy feels more like a Beavis And Butt-head follow-up than an Office Space follower, thanks to its depiction of a society devolving at a rapid clip, and the way it satirizes its instant-gratification-obsessed target audience using the limited vocabulary of the terminally stupid.

In Beavis And Butt-head, that devolution is just suggested; in Idiocracy, it's made dizzyingly literal. A perfectly cast Luke Wilson stars as a quintessential everyman who hibernates for centuries and wakes up in a society so degraded by insipid popular culture, crass consumerism, and rampant anti-intellectualism that he qualifies as the smartest man in the world. Corporations cater even more unashamedly to the primal needs of the lowest common denominator—Starbucks now traffics in handjobs as well as lattes—and the English language has devolved into a hilarious patois of hillbilly, Ebonics, and slang.

Idiocracy's dumb-ass dystopia suggests a world designed by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, a world where the entire populace skirts the fine line separating mildly retarded from really fucking stupid, and where anyone displaying any sign of intelligence is derided as a fag. Working on a sprawling canvas, Judge fills the screen with visual jokes, throwaway gags, and incisive commentary on the ubiquity of advertising—for instance, with the presidential-cabinet member who works paid plugs for Carl's Jr. into everyday conversations. Like so much superior science fiction, Idiocracy uses a fantastical future to comment on a present in which Paris Hilton is infinitely more famous than Nobel laureates. There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk—to borrow a phrase from a poster-boy for the reverse meritocracy—of being misunderestimated.