Idiocracy

We went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for a buck as part of the promotion I mentioned when talking about Knocked Up, but it was sold out. We decided to rent a movie instead of seeing Wild Hogs, and decided on this. It's unfortunate that test screenings didn't go well and FOX blackballed it, giving it an extremely limited release and quickly shoving it onto DVD. It might not be for everyone, but it's a silly, fun movie with a lot of pretty good laughs. The premise is actually a little more scarily realistic than the average science fiction movie. We can already see that intelligence correlates negatively with number of offspring, so it wouldn't be inconceivable that in time the entire planet will be technically retarded. It wouldn't actually get this bad or happen this quickly, but it's still something to wonder about.

It's pretty incredible how long Mike Judge was able to keep stupid funny. The movie could have easily run out of steam and been one-note, but it stayed pretty fresh the whole time. Luke Wilson isn't an especially talented or funny actor, but that actually works to his favor here, as he represents the completely average person who finds himself a genius among idiots. Maya Rudolph is fairly good as the other person from the past, although the whole romance subplot with her and Luke seemed tacked on and pointless. Although the jokes about her pimp "Upgrayedd" were worth it. A lot of the humor in the movie comes from new uses of words and the way businesses from today have drastically changed. Police constantly refer to their suspects as "particular individuals" and the greeter at Costco greets customers with "Welcome to Costco. I love you." Judge did a good job of mixing up all the ways they're stupid and it came out as a really funny movie that didn't get the chance it deserved.