I watched “Idiocracy” (2006) starring Luke Wilson last night and I thought it was brilliant. I feel compelled to tell everyone how important it is to watch it. I hadn’t heard of Idiocracy until recently. It apparently slipped under the cracks and spent maybe a few days on the big screen, however, it screams “hit comedy.” Have you heard of it? I am not the only one late on this movie either. Another blogger on November 23rd 2007, just over a week ago from now said:
“I have watched the movie Idiocracy 3 times in the past week with 3 different groups of people. The appeal of this movie is startling and surprisingly broad.”
I would give you the link to his blog but he almost tells the whole movie so trust me, I’m player helping. This is that blog if you really want to search for it.
It is a satire on corporate driven American culture that takes place in the year 2550. The human characters, whose IQ is a 10th of ours, have been “dummed-down” by the corporate/entertainment media. Director Mike Judge throws an anvil at our corporate hyped media culture and its sponsors with this flick. My first day after watching it, I noticed people on the street that reminded me of characters from Idiocracy, and that is a bad thing.
I was not the only one affected this way too. The same blogger from above put it this way:
“The next morning after watching this movie, I woke up and watched the Packer game, and realized how regardless of Idiocracy’s exagerrated ridiculousness, we may not be that far off from such a world if we’re not careful. Watching a football game is an endless string of sponsors (Coors Light NFL on Fox, sponsored by ______, ________, and the official sponsor of _______) and advertising plugs, of which I can’t even remember. There was an official beer of the NFL, an official car, everything! Somehow in real life, it wasn’t as funny.”
I read this article today about this year’s top interet searches and it made me think about it in a similar way. We live in ridiculous times ladies and gentlemen.
The peculiar thing about this movie is the way 20 Century Fox handled its release. You be the judge, watch the movie, its message is powerful in my opinion. I’d say Fox would have “reasons” to not want to support the release of this movie- by contract they were obligated to release it however.
Listen to this NPR piece on Idiocracy. Go rent it now, but don’t watch the trailer, it is a dumbed-down version of the movie.
Yup, you heard that us humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and all that. 23andme.com is offering a personal genetic analysis. You pay a cool $999,00 and you get a personalized kit with instructions on how to “spit” in plastic cup and send it back to them for analysis. What can they tell you? How about what diseases you are prone to, what traits you got from which relative, or will you be fat by 40?. Sound crazy? This guy feels great about it enough to write a play by play on his experience using this service. I must admit I feel tempted to try it.
