On the surface, Idiocracy had all the right ingredients for a comedy that would be remembered by audience members who have commonality with its protagonist long after its release. Sort of like a Repo Man for the twenty-first century, to use a comparison. Unfortunately, however, the studio found reactions from test audiences to be underwhelming, and made drastic alterations in the hope of increasing its mass appeal. The problem is that instead of improving the film, this interference served to exacerbate the flaws that were already in the story. One clue that self-proclaimed intelligent viewers seem to miss is that the premise of the film is based in some very faulty assumptions regarding the nature of intelligence and intellectual development. For Mike Judge's story idea to work, Pauline and Hermann Einstein would have to have been extraordinary geniuses who were capable of turning the world on its head with new ideas regarding the laws that govern our universe. The same would need to be true of the Teslas, the Newtons... you get the idea.
So when I say that Pauline and Hermann were just an average, ordinary couple who happened to raise a high-functioning autistic child who developed an intense, pervasive interest in theoretical physics, the fundamental flaw in Judge's idea is exposed. During the setup of Judge's future world, several assumptions are made about divisions in the human race for a start. IQs in Judge's world are either above the range we consider normal (above 120 for those who do not already know), or below that range (below 90). No middle ground exists in Judge's world, and this is unfortunate because the middle ground is exactly where the majority of interesting stories occur. Additionally, Judge makes the assumption that two parents of lower intelligence will necessarily produce a child of lower intelligence, or that a child of lower intelligence will not grow up to want a better life than the trailer trash that Judge seems to believe constitutes the entirety of the populace whose IQ can be measured in two digits.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the only watchable parts of Idiocracy are those that take place in the year 2005. The world of 2005, although only seen through what a visualist might call a keyhole, shows so many more shades of grey than the imagined world of 2505 does in the entire remainder of the film. Not helping matters is how the world of 2505 begs so many questions about how the place is kept running, if not optimally then sufficiently for people to do business. I never thought I would be saying something positive about a Stanley Kubrick film, but in Dr. Strangelove, we are shown in rather horrifying terms how the world is the way it is because the best and brightest are in charge. The key element in how intelligence or simple aptitude (which are not the same thing) keeps our world going is not the actions of those at the top of the curve, but the gulf between them and the average citizen. As is said so brilliantly in Caddyshack, the world needs ditch-diggers, too. But Judge seems unable to guess what would happen without the scientists.
Historians will tell you that the best way to predict what happens in a future situation is to look at things that have happened in the past. A society that becomes complacent and stagnant will eventually fall into ruin and be erased by a more optimal or ideally-positioned society. To put it less baldly, the world has a way of righting itself when things get too out of balance. Historians familiar with the Spain that Christopher Columbus left behind on the fateful trip that ended in the Americas will know that humanity is a doomed species without medical care and research. In a world with garbage piles so huge as to provoke avalanches, and doctors who cannot even form a coherent sentence in their native language, mankind is literally target practice for every virus known or unknown. That the human race could have survived like this for more than fifty years without getting a rude wake-up call is perplexing even to those who have not memorised the contents of Paradise Lost.
And this is the big problem for Idiocracy. In attempting to create a story about the rule of the stupid, Mike Judge finds himself resorting to exaggeration to an extent that turns his commentary into an insult to the intelligence of the audience. The word satire is absent from many descriptions of Idiocracy, and with good reason. A satire usually has something to say about its subject, and a good satire says it without being terribly obvious. Idiocracy throws so many obvious jokes at the screen in an attempt to get the audience to laugh by rote that it just leaves the intelligent viewer dumbfounded. The hypocrisy inherent in dumbing down a comedy about dumbing down for mass consumption, for mass consumption, might strike people as ironic. Unfortunately, it would take a radically different edit of Idiocracy to convince me that the man who created it was not, to use George Clooney's classic line from a much better comedy, dumber than a bag of hammers. The material is literally that idiotic.
Hence, I gave Idiocracy a two out of ten. As a human being who has higher aspiration and divergent thought hardwired into his brain, I find it insulting. That should tell you everything you need to know about how well it accomplished its storytelling goals.
So when I say that Pauline and Hermann were just an average, ordinary couple who happened to raise a high-functioning autistic child who developed an intense, pervasive interest in theoretical physics, the fundamental flaw in Judge's idea is exposed. During the setup of Judge's future world, several assumptions are made about divisions in the human race for a start. IQs in Judge's world are either above the range we consider normal (above 120 for those who do not already know), or below that range (below 90). No middle ground exists in Judge's world, and this is unfortunate because the middle ground is exactly where the majority of interesting stories occur. Additionally, Judge makes the assumption that two parents of lower intelligence will necessarily produce a child of lower intelligence, or that a child of lower intelligence will not grow up to want a better life than the trailer trash that Judge seems to believe constitutes the entirety of the populace whose IQ can be measured in two digits.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the only watchable parts of Idiocracy are those that take place in the year 2005. The world of 2005, although only seen through what a visualist might call a keyhole, shows so many more shades of grey than the imagined world of 2505 does in the entire remainder of the film. Not helping matters is how the world of 2505 begs so many questions about how the place is kept running, if not optimally then sufficiently for people to do business. I never thought I would be saying something positive about a Stanley Kubrick film, but in Dr. Strangelove, we are shown in rather horrifying terms how the world is the way it is because the best and brightest are in charge. The key element in how intelligence or simple aptitude (which are not the same thing) keeps our world going is not the actions of those at the top of the curve, but the gulf between them and the average citizen. As is said so brilliantly in Caddyshack, the world needs ditch-diggers, too. But Judge seems unable to guess what would happen without the scientists.
Historians will tell you that the best way to predict what happens in a future situation is to look at things that have happened in the past. A society that becomes complacent and stagnant will eventually fall into ruin and be erased by a more optimal or ideally-positioned society. To put it less baldly, the world has a way of righting itself when things get too out of balance. Historians familiar with the Spain that Christopher Columbus left behind on the fateful trip that ended in the Americas will know that humanity is a doomed species without medical care and research. In a world with garbage piles so huge as to provoke avalanches, and doctors who cannot even form a coherent sentence in their native language, mankind is literally target practice for every virus known or unknown. That the human race could have survived like this for more than fifty years without getting a rude wake-up call is perplexing even to those who have not memorised the contents of Paradise Lost.
And this is the big problem for Idiocracy. In attempting to create a story about the rule of the stupid, Mike Judge finds himself resorting to exaggeration to an extent that turns his commentary into an insult to the intelligence of the audience. The word satire is absent from many descriptions of Idiocracy, and with good reason. A satire usually has something to say about its subject, and a good satire says it without being terribly obvious. Idiocracy throws so many obvious jokes at the screen in an attempt to get the audience to laugh by rote that it just leaves the intelligent viewer dumbfounded. The hypocrisy inherent in dumbing down a comedy about dumbing down for mass consumption, for mass consumption, might strike people as ironic. Unfortunately, it would take a radically different edit of Idiocracy to convince me that the man who created it was not, to use George Clooney's classic line from a much better comedy, dumber than a bag of hammers. The material is literally that idiotic.
Hence, I gave Idiocracy a two out of ten. As a human being who has higher aspiration and divergent thought hardwired into his brain, I find it insulting. That should tell you everything you need to know about how well it accomplished its storytelling goals.