IDIOCRACY, satirizing a society gone stark raving stupid, didn’t wield a scalpel but a shotgun, a blunter tool but more appropriate considering the sheer mass of morons milling & mooing around us. It’s tempting to say “like a herd of oxen” but that would defame innocent animals that, while ungainly, are docile, cooperative and dependable. For all we know, in our asinine arrogance, their bovine bellows are thoughtful, maybe even philosophical. The plaintive lowing of cattle or sheep are violin caresses next to the hyena gibbers you endure from the inmates of our open air asylum, bleating “a hybrid of hillbilly, Valley Girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts.”

In 2005 (when you’re nostalgic for 2005 you know you’re mortally wounded) the US military (automatically gush “Thank you for your service” or your passport will get DOGE’d) selects two hapless individuals for a suspended animation experiment. Laid back Army librarian ‘Sgt. Joe Bauers’ (Luke Wilson) is ‘volunteered” along with ‘Rita’ (Maya Rudolph), a charges-dropped street hooker. A blunder (from the Pentagon?) results in their short-term sleep overshooting thaw-date by five centuries.  Awakened and released into the United States of 2505, the two ripped winkles find the results of “USA!'”s force-fed yet eagerly embraced intellectual and moral deterioration have reached Amazonian Primeval. A crude showbiz fake artist as President? Inconceivable!…

Back in 2006, when Mike Judge (Office Space) directed the screenplay he co-wrote with Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) ailing Ameriduh was already a long way down the detour to Dumm, and the movie’s sarcasm was savagely funny. The scripted devolution is set 500 years in the future—remember when there was one?—but a “WTF-happened?”warp speed has, a mere two decades later, dumped the once Magic Bus at the edge of Suicide Cliff, a demented dunce at the wheel. Seen in the imbecile infected present, the snarky lark still gets laughs, but in today’s Dystopia”R”Us the gags hold a hurt quotient; it’s blown past prescience to sageness. Might be a good time to pray. Before you’re forced to…

Skittish over the show’s mocking of not just the average dipshit but of Starbucks, Carl’s Jr., Costco and other serial predators corporate standby’s, 20th Century Fox took the courage route and truncated bookings to a single week, hot-tater dropping the $2,400,000 production faster than a lickspittle named Lindsay can contradict himself. The grosses trickled down to just $495,303—worldwide. *

Wilson makes a great Everyman guinea pig/sacrificial lamb/hero and Rudolph slays the roll-with-it working girl. Their unwitted ally as they traverse the foolscape is lawyer ‘Frito Pendejo’ (Dax Shephard), one of the “useless eaters” in the made great again septic tank ruled by president ‘Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho’ (Terry Crews, chomping it up), whose cabinet is about as inept as—take a wild guess. Secondary casting is select and there is hilarious art direction, prop design and costuming. The takedown of our breakdown slingshots 84 minutes, just enough to get the point across without wearing out either it or you.

“But I just want you to ask yourselves one question first. Do you really want to live in a world… where you try to blow up the one person that’s tryin’ to help you?”

Shot in Texas (talk about a loaded phrase) around Austin and its satellites San Marcos, Round Rock and Pflugerville (Pflugerville? sorry, can’t resist ‘Hooterville’ or Boogerville: consider me sued). **

With flawlessly x-rayed brain deadness from Andrew Wilson (Luke’s brother, as ‘Beef Supreme’), Anthony Campos, Brendan Hill, Justin Long, Patrick Fischler, Stephen Root, Thomas Haden Church and Melissa Dawn. Narrated by Earl Mann.  “Why come you got no tattoo?”

* Speaking of dolts & cults—Idiocracy found afterlife in video rentals, making twenty times its theatrical haul. Eventually the credit card records and net searches of all those treasonous enough to see it will be used to justify shanghaiing ’em off to a new home in the Everglades. Now that we’ve offered belated applause to this piece of resistance let’s presume eventual deportation: my status as an immigrant goes back to the 1640’s but it’s just a matter of time before they get to me. And you. Nah, never ever you...

** Sincere apologies to the millions of decent people in Texas, stuck with swine at the controls.

Mike Judge: “I’m no prophet, I was off by 490 years.”