Idiocracy

Just watched the Mike Judge film Idiocracy. It manages to combine high-brow satire with fart-jokes to hilarious effect.

Joe is an entirely average soldier who is drafted into the Army's Hibernation Experiment. Originally intended to last a year, Joe finds himself waking up in 2505 after the experiment goes awry. In the intervening 500 years man has become stupid. Yes, even more stupid than now. The premise is that smart people stopped having families whilst dumb people bred at an alarming rate. Not particularly PC, but an interesting set-up nonetheless. By 2505 people are so stupid that soft-drinks have replaced water, the box office no 1 movie is called "Ass" and Joe is the worlds most intelligent man. With the help of Rita, a prostitute who was also frozen in time, Joe tries to save the dumb world and return home using a Time Masheen that some smart guy made in the past.

Sadly this film was overlooked at the box-office, but Judge's earlier picture Office Space benefited from going straight-to-dvd and hopefully this will also happen to Idiocracy. After all, the leads are a mildly famous movie-star (Luke Wilson) and the other guy off Punk'd (Dax Shepard). I'm not sure if Judge intended this to be a scathing satire on Modern America or just a funny film with gags about dumb folks. Either way it should have that Simpsons appeal of blending intelligent humour with some guy getting repeatedly whacked in the scotum. I'm sure some group of smug young comedians have built their entire Edinburgh Fringe show around the idea that all Americans are stupid (not like us British! Oh, hang on...) but that kind of broad brush-stroke comedy lacks what this film has in spades - original observations and actual jokes. Plus a guy getting whacked in the scrotum.