Movie Review: Idiocracy

For starters let me apologize for my long layoff. I have been very busy lately and I'm trying to get things settled in my life. I figured now was a good time to get back into things. I may or may not have a book review to follow this movie review (we'll see how I feel).

My sister gave me Idiocracy recently and I only had a vague recollection of what it might be about. I read up on it in IMDb and was interested so I popped it in the DVD player last night.

The premise is simple: Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) is frozen as part of an army experiment. Unfortunately the experiment does not go as planned and Bauers wakes up 500 years in the future. Apparently, due to stupid people breeding more than smart people, the average IQ has dropped quite a bit and everyone is stupid. The movie follows Bauers as he tries to get back home and solve the world's problems all at the same time.

Though not the best made movie, the premise is quite interesting and there are many hilarious moments throughout the movie. I wonder though, if the silliness and stupidity of the movie is on purpose. It has been surmised (on IMDb message boards - though I have to say I agree with the line of thinking) that perhaps the movie is a reflection of our current society in which big jocks and rock stars are more valued than intellectuals.

Directed and written by Mike Judge (Office Space), this is one of those movies that I would recommend. My high standards won't allow me to give this anything higher than a 3/4. I struggled with this rating as all the attributes of the movie that drag it down appear to be done on purpose - for example, the stupidity of the characters, and even the ending).

At the very minimum this movie is worth a few laughs and at under 80mins (the credits started rolling at about 78mins on my dvd player) it's not too big a time waster (like King Kong for instance).