Idiocracy

2006 comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: fell asleep)

Plot: Owen Wilson's brother and Minnie Ripperton's kid are used in an Army hibernation experiment for reasons that I don't remember, and after a big scandal, they are forgotten. 500 years later, they awaken and find a society so dumbed-down that they actually seem like geniuses. Owen Wilson's brother becomes part of the president's cabinet and tries to solve an agriculture problem while keeping his eye out for a time machine that will take him back to his time.

This isn't as funny or as consistent as Office Space, a movie that isn't as funny as its fans seem to think it is. This seems to have a following based solely on the fact that it's a Mike Judge joint, but although it's at times almost clever and the 12-year-old inside me (that doesn't sound perverse, does it?) did giggle at the de-evolution of the Fuddruckers franchise and every time the words "ass" or "balls" were mentioned, the whole thing seems like a half-assed execution of a pretty good idea. The special effects are also so poor that they get in the way of the storytelling. And the storytelling isn't great anyway, just there as a backdrops for the jokes really. Gags either don't last long enough or don't have enough ideas (the inaccurate histories of the time machine at the end of the film) or go on too long (the monster truck rehabilitation), and it really seems like Judge and whoever else was involved wrote a first draft and then refused to cut or rewrite anything. This should really be a lot better than it is. Balls.