Idiocracy (2006) Revisited – Comedy Movie Review

In this week’s instalment of The Best Movie You Never Saw, we get in our wayback machine and head to the utopian year of 2006 to discuss Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. Hailed by many as one of the smartest dumb movies of all time, Idiocracy had an unceremonious theatrical release that resulted in a box office gross of less than $500,000. So, how did Judge’s third film go from obscurity to becoming a film that many find has become eerily close to our reality?

For those of you who don’t already know the name Mike Judge, the filmmaker and actor got his start in animation in the early 1990s with MTV series Liquid Television. His Milton and Frog Baseball shorts earned him the series Beavis and Butthead. For 90s kids like me, Beavis and Butthead were the epitome of anti-establishment rule breaking. Foul-mouthed and hilariously nasty, Judge’s series paved the way for series like South Park. When that series ended, Judge began a thirteen year run with FOX series King of the Hill, a much more wholesome sitcom about an animated Texas family. During the run of that series, Judge made his live action feature debut with Office Space. Now, I likely don’t have to tell you much about that 1999 film which has become a pop culture stalwart and a major inspiration for The Office. It took seven years before Judge made another live action effort and it all was due to DisneyLand.

While on vacation at Mickey’s amusement park, Judge witnessed two women pushing strollers. The parents began arguing and spewing profanities at each other, in earshot of their two small offspring. Judge was taken aback and thought of how horrible it would be if humanity was like this in the future. Using the idea of dumb people propogating and taking over the majority of the world’s population became the crux of Idiocracy. Judge’s idea of a dystopian society populated by devolution has been a common one throughout history including H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and to a lesser extent Planet of the Apes. Partnering with Etan Cohen, screenwriter of the films Tropic Thunder and Men in Black 3, Judge’s script went through the working titled The United States of Uhhh-merica and 3001 before settling on Idiocracy. With a budget of just $3 million, filming took place in 2004 in Austin, Texas and the surrounding area. 

In the end, the film was barely released, but as soon as it hit DVD and cable, audiences started to discover this satire about about a regular guy (Luke Wilson) who wakes up in a future society ruled by morons. No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, the film couldn’t help but his close to him, and it’s since become a classic satire among those who’ve seen it. It’s this week’s Best Movie You Never Saw, and a classic that’s just waiting to be discovered. Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard and Terry Crews (in a classic performance as U.S President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho) co-star. 

Check out previous instalments of The Best Movie You Never Saw below!