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How to describe Idiocracy? It is the most thought-provoking bad movie I've ever seen. But, stand warned, it really is bad. The plot is flimsy, the characters are flat, and the minutes fly like hours. You'll be desperate for it to end, long before the 87 minutes run their course.
And yet it lingers in the mind. The day after you see it, you'll see it everywhere. As the months go by, you'll be more and more impressed by its accuracy. In the last century, World's Fairs often set aside space to show what life would be like in the future, displays with names like "Temple of Progress." You could say that Idiocracy renders an unnerving Temple of Regress. But if you did, they'd call you a fag.
That's one of the running jokes in the movie. Time-traveler Joe Bauers (played by Luke Wilson) awakens 500 years in the future, and discovers that he is now the smartest person in the world. When he politely asks help or directions from the obese and stupid folks around him, they guffaw and ask why he's talking "like a fag." The idea that today's common speech might one day sound pompously contrived is startling—until, on reflection, it begins to seem dismayingly plausible.
Here's a quick run-through of the plot, such as it is (spoilers ahead). Joe is an Army librarian, thoroughly mediocre. When told he's being given a new assignment, he protests, "But every time Sarge says 'Lead, follow, or get out of the way,' I get out of the way!" It's explained that this is supposed to embarrass him into leading, or at least following. "That doesn't embarrass me," says Joe.
Joe has been chosen as a guinea pig for a program to flash-freeze soldiers during peacetime and thaw them out when needed. (Rita, played by Maya Rudolph, is selected as his female counterpart, but she's inconsequential as far as the plot's concerned.) The program is forgotten, and when Joe's capsule breaks open in 2505 he is bewildered by the lumbering stupidity and crudity all around. He goes for help to a hospital, where Dr. Lexus (Justin Long) tells him, in a genial surfer-dude voice, "Well, it says on your chart you're f___ed up. You talk like a fag and your s___'s all retarded." Lexus assures him that it's OK to be retarded. "My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now."
Joe leaves the hospital without paying and winds up under arrest. He is required to take an intelligence test ("If you have a bucket that holds two gallons, and another bucket that holds five gallons, how many buckets do you have?"), which reveals that he is the smartest man in the world. The president appoints him secretary of the interior, and gives him one week to solve the drought crisis. Failing to meet the deadline, Joe is sentenced to Monday Night Rehablilitation, a televised gladiatorial contest in which he is expected to lose his life. But at the last minute word comes through that seedlings are beginning to sprout, and Joe's life is spared.
Well, that's it. I don't know if the right term in this case is "spoiler."
What's memorable about this movie is the details. For example, the Costco of the future has aisles numbering in the tens of thousands. There are rail stations to help shoppers get around. Racks soar overhead till they're lost in darkness, and a long shot reveals a field of neatly ranked red sofas stretching to the horizon. Joe's new friend Frito (Dax Shepard) is nostalgic visiting Costco, because he went to law school there. And at the entrance stands a greeter, a young man the size of a sumo wrestler, who morosely tells each shopper, "Welcome to Costco. I love you."
Now, there are plenty of jokes circulating about Costco's vastness, but the greeter's "I love you" is a bit of genius. Director Mike Judge has a knack for taking something most of us half-recognize and giving it a satirical twist that will promote it permanently to full awareness. It's a talent he showed in his best-known film, Office Space (1999), which was a dud at the box office but later took on cult status and now shows up frequently on tv. It depicts twentysomethings grappling with the novel experience of earning their own keep, holding down jobs that are a far cry from what their teachers promised would be theirs if they only followed their dreams.
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