Like a dancing goblin in an unmedicated madman's eye, Mike Judge's 2006 follow-up to the cult classic Office Space was gone before you had a chance to tell your MySpace friends all about it. 20th Century Fox, for some inexplicable reason, decided to dump this highly anticipated motion picture into a handful of multiplexes with little to no marketing whatsoever. Why wouldn't a studio want you to see the movie it spent millions of dollars to finance and produce? How could they just abandon their own flesh and blood in such a cruel and unusual manner?
One theory suggests the film is a shambles, a rusty curtain rod supporting vomit curtains. The other boldly proclaims that perhaps the studio had no clue whatsoever as to how to market their unusual production and, in an effort to cut their losses, merely tossed the thing into a few select markets in order to fulfill their contractual obligations. Then, you know, do the same thing with its DVD release.
The latter, of course, makes perfect sense to me. I mean, how do you positively promote a picture that essentially insults its audience for roughly 90-minutes or so? That's a tough sell, regardless of where you're trying to peddle your filthy wares. This may explain why Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson and Mayah Rudolph, remains largely unknown. This is a shame, I think, because it's certainly one of the edgier comedies I've seen recently. Not the funniest, mind you, the edgiest. Whether you enjoyed this outing or not, you have to admit the film's got a hell of a lot of balls, the kind that could tip a dump truck with one subtle pelvic thrust.
The slower half of the Wilson brothers stars as Private Joe Bowers, a military man who just wants to survive long enough to collect that oh-so rewarding pension he's got coming. The guy's got a pretty sweet gig, too; instead of blasting foreign enemies with a set of deafening automatic weapons, he sits on his behind in a secluded library watching television all day long. Unfortunately for Joe, his forward-thinking superiors have selected him for a top-secret experiment, one that could give our joyous nation the upper hand in the violent world of ground warfare.
The government wants to cryogenically freeze our best soldiers in order to keep them fresh and clean and strong in case of any future skirmishes. To keep from using their best men as test subjects, they select the wholly average Joe and chronic prostitute Rita (Rudolph) to be the guinea pigs in this little project. Without much preparation for such a daunting task, the proverbial lab rats are thrown into their respective pods and promptly frozen, presumably until the year 2006.
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Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
Well, you're certainly right about Fox's treatment of this film - I had absolutely no idea this was coming out next week and I actually wanted to see it.
2 - T. Rigney
I'll be the first to admit that Idiocracy isn't that great, but Fox's treatment of the film is just embarrassing. It's a tough sell, for sure, but lesser, more abrasive films have received better support in the past. Here's hoping my silly write-up will let others know it's out there.