Idiocracy
2006 · Directed by Mike Judge
Original language: English
- comedy
- science fiction
- adventure
- thriller
The story
To test its top-secret Human Hibernation Project, the Pentagon picks the most average European-Americans it can find - an Army private and a prostitute - and sends them to the year 2505 after a series of freak events. But when they arrive, they find a civilization so dumbed-down that they're the smartest people around.
What it’s like
Flat, overlit, deliberately unlovely imagery: bright fluorescent offices, sun-blasted strip malls and a future of garish, crowded billboards and littered wastelands, all shot in a plain, borderless digital look with broad, unfussy framing rather than anything painterly. The sound is a cheap, cartoonish mess of blaring commercials, pop-rock stingers and gags timed to the beat of a punchline, so the film feels loud and restless even when nothing much is happening. Its vibe is sardonic, sour-sweet and mildly anarchic, a scrappy satire that suits a lazy weekend with friends, a comfort rewatch when you want to laugh at institutions, or background noise while doing chores. Pacing is brisk and episodic, the arc of an ordinary, decent man slowly realising how little the world around him values thinking. Intensity is low to moderate: crude humour, sex jokes and some slapstick, a few brief scuffles and cartoonish violence, nothing gory or frightening, but it is mean-spirited toward its targets. For people who enjoy irreverent, dark comedy about consumerism, politics and dumb-downed culture, and who don't need gentleness or subtlety.
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