Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is a film about the end of intelligence. Set in the year 2505, it finds two people from 2005 — a soldier named Joe Bauers and a prostitute named Rita — waking up in a world where everyone else has gotten stupider. The movie wants to be a satire of consumer culture, corporate power, and the dumbing down of the American public. Mostly, it succeeds. Sometimes, it doesn’t.
Trailer, via Luis Medeiros Pereira.
The Setup
The film opens with a prologue that explains its central premise. People with lower IQs and incomes tend to reproduce at higher rates than more educated, affluent individuals. Over generations, this trend reduces the average intelligence of the population. By the year 2505, the result is a society that has lost almost everything that distinguishes it from a herd of cattle.
Joe and Rita are chosen for a government hibernation experiment because they are the most average Americans the military can find. The government picks Joe, a library worker in the U.S. Army, and Rita, a prostitute whose pimp, Upgrayedd, is paid off to let her participate. The experiment is meant to test suspended animation, but a scandal involving the commanding officer and Upgrayedd closes the base and buries the project. Five hundred years later, Joe and Rita’s hibernation chambers are buried under a mountain of garbage from a waste dump. A final load of trash triggers an avalanche that crashes their chambers open.
They wake up in what used to be Washington, D.C., now occupied by a population that speaks a mix of hillbilly, Valley Girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts. They are laughed at when they ask for help. Joe enters a hospital and believes the army drugged him. He reads a magazine and sees the year on the cover. His astronomical hospital bill tells him the price of staying alive in a world that no longer values thought.
The World of 2505
The society in 2505 is a caricature of late capitalism run amok. Everyone drinks Brawndo, a sports drink that has become the national beverage. Sex sells everything, and the slogan “Brawndo is what plants crave” is everywhere. The president, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, is a muscle-bound moron who speaks in slogans. The legal system is a joke, with a prosecutor who laughs at Joe’s attempt to defend himself.
The satire aims at several targets:
- Anti-intellectualism, which has turned intelligence into a liability.
- Commercialism, where brands rule and facts are optional.
- Consumerism, where people buy what they want without thinking.
- Dysgenics, the idea that the stupid breed faster than the smart.
- Voluntary childlessness, which the film treats as a symptom of cultural decay.
- Overpopulation, which strains resources and attention.
Judge and his co-writer Etan Cohen have built a world where these forces have merged into a single, toxic whole. The humor comes from watching the smartest man in the room try to explain basic concepts to people who cannot understand them. It is a grim kind of comedy, but it is consistent.
Joe and Rita
Luke Wilson plays Joe Bauers, and he does the heavy lifting of making the audience care about a character who is supposed to be average. Maya Rudolph plays Rita, and she grounds the satire with a performance that is warm and human even when the script is cruel. Together, they are the film’s emotional center. Without them, Idiocracy would collapse into pure cynicism.
Dax Shepard plays Frito Pendejo, a lawyer who becomes Joe’s ally. Terry Crews plays President Camacho, a physical force of nature who delivers some of the funniest lines in the film. The supporting cast fills out the world with a gallery of grotesques, from the secretary of defense to the attorney general. The casting is strong, and the actors commit fully to the absurdity of their roles.
“In the future, intelligence is extinct.”
That tagline captures the film’s thesis. Intelligence has not been wiped out by accident. It has been voted off the island, one generation at a time, by people who preferred comfort to thought. The film argues that this is not a disaster waiting to happen. It is a disaster that has already happened.
The Humor
The jokes in Idiocracy are mostly visual and situational. The film does not rely on witty dialogue or sharp one-liners. Instead, it relies on the contrast between Joe’s intelligence and everyone else’s stupidity. This works for stretches, especially in the courtroom scenes where Joe tries to explain logic to a jury that cannot follow it.
But the humor loses its edge when the film leans too heavily on repetition. The same gag about Brawndo and plants is funny once. It is less funny twice. It becomes a running joke that stops being a joke and starts being a beat. The film could have been tighter. Eighty-five minutes is generous for a movie this thin.
The Message
The film’s message is that intelligence is a resource that can be squandered. When people stop valuing education, reason, and curiosity, the culture suffers. The film does not offer a solution. It offers a warning. The warning is that the future is coming, and it is not pretty.
Judge has said that the film was shaped by a script he wrote in 2001, which had the working title 3001. He rewrote it a year later, and the final version was shot in 2004 at Austin Studios and other locations in Texas. The concept dates back to 1996, when Judge first envisioned it. That history shows a filmmaker who has spent years refining an idea, not rushing one out the door.
The Reception
Idiocracy was released in the United States on September 1, 2006. Its marketing was sparse. 20th Century Fox was hesitant to promote the film, refused to give it a wide release, and did not screen it for critics. The decision was unexpected, given the success of Office Space (1999).
According to Crews, the film’s satirical depiction of corporations made it financially unviable. Judge attributed the studio’s decision to negative test screenings. Fox believed the film would develop a cult following through its DVD release, similar to Office Space. The film’s failure to find an audience was not a surprise to anyone involved.
The film’s critical score is 6.4 out of 10. That is a fair number for a movie that is clever but uneven. It is a film that gets its point across but does not always get there gracefully. The satire is sharp, but the execution is messy. The humor is often on target, but it repeats itself.
The Verdict
Idiocracy is a film that is smarter than the people in it. That is a compliment to the film and an insult to its characters. It is a movie about the end of intelligence, and it manages to be intelligent enough to make that point. It is also a movie that could have been sharper, leaner, and more focused.
The film’s strengths are its lead performances, its world-building, and its willingness to offend. Its weaknesses are its repetition and its lack of a clear emotional payoff. It is a film that you will remember, but you will not feel better for having seen it.
The film is a cautionary tale about what happens when people stop thinking. It is also a cautionary tale about what happens when filmmakers stop editing. It is a film that deserves to be seen, but it is not a film that deserves to be praised. It is a film that is worth talking about, but it is not a film that is worth celebrating.
It is a film that is intelligent, but it is a film that is extinct.
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