Signs and Meaning in Cinema
With apologies to If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, and Peter Wollen.
Wanted to like IDIOCRACY, even though the story concept (dumb-asses outbreed normal intellects, dumbing down America into a futuristic stutopia) smacks of eugenics. It was still a nice idea for a movie, and there are some good gags in it, just not enough. Mike Judge can’t really tell a story with the camera, and there’s this voice-over slathered on everything to explain what’s going on, which is pretty ironic in a movie satirizing stupidity.
It does deliver some good laughs, but I prefer OFFICE SPACE. Somehow the size of this one maybe swamped Judge’s ability to deal with the story and characters. But Frito, played by Dax Shepherd, is a very good idiot.
shadowplay 
May 6, 2009 at 1:29 am
Idiocracy is amusing, but thin. Its premise can’t really draw blood. Office Space is more effective on that score.
May 6, 2009 at 2:36 pm
The leading guy in Office Space was way better than Luke Wilson, too. Whatever happened to him?
May 6, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I have to admit I do like Idiocracy a great deal, and I think the fuck-stupid voiceover is generally admitted to be the result of hamfisted postproduction meddling by producers anxious to make the whole thing more – er, uh, simplicious. It improves on a second viewing. Beavis and Butthead Do America is still his best work, though some might say that Gran Torino is sort of a movie adaptation of King of the Hill, and would have been even better if Clint’s granddaughter was played by Luanne Platter.
May 6, 2009 at 5:46 pm
B&BDA actually makes me sad. I feel too sorry for the retirees whose vacation is ruined. So I can never enjoy it. And I generally have a pretty mean sense of humour, I’d say (I did kill a small child in one of my comedies).