In February of 1999, 20th Century Fox released Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike
Judge’s live action directorial debut, the workplace comedy Office Space, in relative
cloak-and-dagger fashion. This was surprising since the feature film spin-off of
his animated hit, the willfully warped road trip Beavis and Butt-head Do America, had rung up considerable critical
praise and over $60 million in theatrical receipts for Paramount just over two
years earlier. Office Space only
grossed $10 million in theaters, but went on to sell literally millions of
DVDs. Its dead-on satire of droning corporate culture struck a zeitgeist nerve —
particularly with the just-out-of-college crowd who had grown up with Beavis and Butt-head — and the movie
became a word-of-mouth cult hit for those in the comedic know, shrewdly dissecting
workplace mundanity and undeniably laying the groundwork for the Emmy-winning
American remake of The Office.
Still, that botched release is nothing compared with the
treatment that Judge’s latest film, the futuristic comedy Idiocracy, received this past fall. With apologies to Yogi Berra,
it could be characterized as déjà vu all over again — if only it achieved even
the ignoble, air-quote heights of Office
Space’s discharge. Shepherded out to 130 theaters in early September in an
unpublicized, cover-of-night, seven-city dump, the movie was a corporate murder
victim, plain and simple. With such an apprehensive release, fans could be
forgiven for thinking that the film was a giant, steaming pile of Gigli. The thing is, it’s most decidedly
not. In fact, it’s actually pretty funny — a knowingly crude satire of
sustained subversiveness that frequently if not quite everlastingly touches
upon brilliance.
hypotheses regarding evolution have been somewhat misguided, and that over time
humankind’s own development and gene pool has rewarded those who simply
reproduce the most instead of the smartest and fittest. From there, the story
centers on Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson),
a soldier who’s made a career out of avoiding responsibility. Chosen for a
special scientific experiment because of this very aimlessness, Joe is put into
a hibernation pod for a year in order to test a military program that will
allow them to freeze and store the best soldiers for when they are needed the
most. Unable
to find a suitably shiftless and pedestrian female candidate within their ranks
to test alongside Joe, the military turns to the private sector, and recruits a
prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph). When the military brass in charge of the
experiment gets caught up in a drug and corruption sting, Joe and Rita are forgotten,
and awaken a few centuries later.
where 500 years of base pursuits, laziness, veritable inbreeding and the general
lack of any rigorous intellectual application have combined to produce a slack-jawed
society nearly incapable of solving even the most rudimentary problems of
sanitation. Great trash heaps abound, people relieve themselves in toilet easy
chairs, and the few taller buildings that haven’t collapsed are tied together
with massive cables. Over the years, the burger chain Fuddrucker’s has
morphed into Buttfuckers; Starbucks gives hand-jobs with its lattes; and tax
refunds can be received in the form of further sexual gratification.
in a mashed-up dialect of hillbilly, Valley Girl and unchecked impulse (“Like,
man, I like sex…”), and evinces the logic and processing of a stoner attempting
to retrace his footsteps and explain the events of his day. The top celebrity
in the nation, meanwhile, is the star of a reality show called Ow, My Balls!, and the number one movie
(and winner of eight Oscars, mind you) is simply called Ass, and features 90 minutes of bare-butted flatulence. Those that
do “read” peruse magazines like Hot Naked
Chicks & World Report.
environment, Joe is the smartest man alive. Derided for his “faggy talk,” Joe
is picked up for not having an identifying tattoo, and his lawyer Frito (Dax
Shepard) does him no favors. Joe talks his way out of prison once, and reunites
with Rita, but in trying to make his way to a time machine located in the
cavernous depths of a city-sized Costco, eventually gets picked up and sent to
Washington, D.C.
president (Terry Crews, above left) is a five-time smackdown wrestling champion, and
in a speech in front of the House of Representin’, he tasks Joe with coming up
with solutions to the nation’s problems, which include awful dust storms and a
lack of crops (which has, in the president’s words, negatively impacted
“burrito toppings”). At first Joe resists, and merely uses his new appointment
as Secretary of the Interior to procure a pardon for Rita and continue his search
for said time machine. When he realizes that the country has been watering soil
with omnipresent sports beverage Brawndo (“It has what plants crave…
electrolytes!”) instead of water, though, he tries to affect change.
by any stretch of the imagination, but Judge’s satirical touch — while drawing
most of its inspiration from outlandishly crude arenas — is remarkably adroit
and complete. There’s also just something perversely right about casting
Luke Wilson — who’s managed to out-bland Edward Burns as a leading man — as the
arithmetically affirmed, most completely average guy in the world. After all,
when Matthew McConaughey, Vince Vaughn, Mark Ruffalo and his older brother Owen
(among many others) won’t return a studio’s calls or yield to their rom-com
solicitations, his is the name finally bandied about to place opposite Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Kate Hudson
or other some up-and-coming starlet. Just call him
Mr. Stop-Gap.
effective special effects work. For all the future-thought tidbits and touches
on display in sci-fi flicks like Minority Report, Idiocracy
is likewise steadfast and, dare I say, amusingly intelligent about the
extension of its basic conceit.
treatment than its theatrical dumping. The movie is presented in an anamorphic
widescreen transfer that’s clear and free of grain, and it comes with a robust
English language 5.1 surround sound audio track, a Spanish language Dolby
surround sound track and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Apart
from an animated main menu screen that is quite cluttered and somewhat
difficult to navigate, the only bonus feature is a collection of five deleted
scenes, running a total of three minutes and 20 seconds. The bulk of these are meaningless
interstitials, but two contrasting scenes show a phone call between Joe and his
girlfriend before the experiment, and her attempts to reach him afterward,
presumably when he is cryogenically sealed up and asleep for a year. I suppose
it’s also worth mentioning, in some parallel future world, that the language
menu does feature a set of bare (male) buttocks. The lack of other extras is
frustrating, all the more so because of the movie’s quality. Audio commentary
from Judge about the behind-the-scenes scoop on Idiocracy’s long, strange path would have been a real hoot; here’s
hoping the full, true story comes out some day. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)
the new movie Venus assays the slow bloom and maturation of a petulant adolescent commoner, and her charged relationship with an aristocratic, aging actor old enough to be her grandfather, and possibly even great-grandfather. The title is a tip of the hat not to beauty in merely the classical sense, but rather the hold and sway that physical attractiveness affords, the advantages it frequently provides. More than ably holding down the screen opposite the legendary Peter O’Toole is newcomer Jodie Whittaker (above right), a 24-year-old recent graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with but a handful of stage and television credits to her name. Still, says director Roger Michell, Whittaker “ticks all the boxes.” 
Rolling Stones-versus-Beatles argument), but Four Weddings and a Funeral stands rightly alongside fellow nominee The Shawshank Redemption as an under-heralded star of the evening, and a movie that certainly holds up every bit as much today as it did upon release more than a decade ago.