Battleangel | Personal

Idiocracy could very well be the best movie you didn’t see in 2006. A somewhat dull plot, I will admit, engineered to carry searing and amazingly pertinent criticism of contemporary life in the United States. A seriously undermarketed movie that is recommended for everyone that wants a dystopic glimpse of a future built entirely on the lifeless culture that we nurture, the celebrities that we worship and the corporate machine that we man and feed. Not so unlike Mike Judge’s previous feature Office Space in its humorous and partly brilliant social commentary.

Conspiracy-wise, some have gone so far as to suggest that the lack of publicity for the movie and Fox’s lack of interest despite obvious comedy potential is due to the same social commentary. In particular the low-intelligence dysgenics which is a central theme of the movie. Not to mention how it totally molests Fox News, big corporations like Costco and “Brawndo”, political life, American culture and everything in between. This barrage of criticism, the fact that the story is a dud and that the dysgenics theme (which may be interesting on a scientific level but produces a level of stupidity that detracts from the plot and an otherwise great movie) was probably enough to give Idiocracy a limited release.

Then again, sometimes we don’t watch movies solely for the plot. Sometimes we watch them for the scantly clad women, the brilliantly choreographed martial arts, the invigorating action, the heart-stopping horror or the pertinent social commentary. And this is certainly a case of the latter. And besides, it was at least better than Borat, which incidentally also had a worthless plot engineered to make certain points.

“Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.”