- Location: Kevin and Kate's
- With Beavis and Butthead (and, to a lesser extent, King of the Hill) Mike Judge made a name for himself by producing satire that actually appealed to the targets it lampooned. The tone was always more juvenile than Juvenalian, inviting everyone to laugh along with the idiots, even if doing so subtly brought the audience one step closer to the stage. Idiocracy may very well be the culmination of this approach: A really stupid and entertaining film about the really stupid and entertaining future of humanity.
- As the hilarious opening narration informs us, evolution had caused humans to become "stupider at a frightening rate" while the world's greatest minds were being wasted "conquering hair loss and prolonging erections." As a result, the astoundingly average cryogenic test subjects Joe (Luke Wilson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph) wake up in the year 2505 to find that they are the two smartest people on the planet. By far. In the future, corporate sponsorship has reached absolute saturation, TV programming consists of such gems as "The Masturbation Channel" and "Ow, My Balls!" and the English language has transformed into "a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts." The examples are so perfect that I can't stop listing them. Costco grants law degrees, Starbucks sells handjobs, and the top movie is just called Ass. It won eight Oscars.
- There's nominally a plot in there someplace about fixing all the world's problems with the help of a lawyer named Frito (Dax Shepard) and President Camacho (Terry Crews), but fortunately the story never really overwhelms the film's settings and characters. That said, it's tough to decide exactly how to evaluate Idiocracy. It's damn funny for much of its meager 84 minutes, but there are also times where it feels like the filmmakers have run out of new ways to make mouth-breathing seem funny. Then again, perhaps the joke is on me since it's impossible to intelligently discuss this film without sounding "pompous and faggy." Okay, you got me, Idiocracy.
- Stephen Root and Thomas Haden Church had cameos in this film.
