Can something be both prescient and hilarious at the same time?
Mike Judge's 2006 comedy IDIOCRACY proves the answer is a resounding YES.
Luke Wilson plays Joe, an army private devoted to being so mediocre that he is assured to be passed over for every promotion.
When the Army is looking for a test subject who defines average, no one fits the bill quite like Joe and he's immediately the test subject for a huge experiment.
The government is working on a hibernation program, so they shove Joe and fellow test subject and hooker Rita (Maya Rudolph) into giant tubes, planning on waking them up a year later.
Due to some damn funny happenings, they are actually awoken 500 years in the future.
Rather than a modern utopia, they are greeted by a land where the "dumbing down of America" has continued and slid the average IQ into the dumper.
Judge creates funny scene after scene, where every branch of the government has turned into a bad reality show (hmmmmmmm......) and Joe's average intelligence makes him the smartest man on the planet.
It's hard to mix social commentary with big laughs, but Judge masters it, aided by a great cast.
Dax Shepard is hilarious as Frito, (Huh?) Terry Crews is the President of the US, Justin Long is an LOL doctor. Wilson never breaks his stunned bewilderment at how far the country's gone South and earns plenty of laughs.
The opening narration and set up in which we are shown the reproductive rates of white trash versus intelligent folks opens up with huge laughs, peppered with the realization that beneath the humor, we might have a problem in the future. LOL LOL
When one of your opening lines is: "Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections." you have my attention...LOL.
Judge proved he could make us laugh with "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill. While his earlier film "Office Space" has earned a much bigger following, IDIOCRACY deserves just as much attention.
Especially now, as we appear to be doing everything we can to rush headlong into stupidity. Ahead of its time when released in 2006, the world's caught up with IDIOCRACY.
It's 84 minutes of laughs that I'll give a B.
Comments