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Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, Anthony 'Citric' Campos ... see more see more... , David Herman , Turk Pipkin , Stephen Root , Sara Rue , Andrew Wilson , Thomas Haden Church , Daniel Smith , Robert Musgrave , Michael McCafferty , Justin Long , Earl Mann , Heather Kafka , Chris Warner , Patrick Fischler , Greg Pitts , Darlene Hunt , Randal Reeder , Lonnie Nelson , Danny Cochran , Lidia Porto , Valerie Posas , Brad "Scarface" Jordan , Mitch Baker , Mark Turner , Sonny Castillo , Kevin S. McAfee , Ryan Melton , Heath Jones , Eli Muñoz , Ryan Ransdell , Melissa Sweet , Wes Davis , Kevin Klee , John Dodson , Melissa Espinales , Joseph Cheatham , Jason Schaefer , Richard Reeder , Lawrence Castillo , Christopher M. Campos , Roman Ramos , Brendan Hill , Melissa Dawn , Derek Southers , Greg Kelly , Jason Konopisos , Marcos Martinez Rios

Mike Judge wrote and directed this offbeat sci-fi comedy which gives a new meaning to the expression "people are getting dumber all the time." In 2005, Pvt. Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) is a soldier chose... read more read more...n to take part in a secret military scientific experiment in which he will be put into induced hibernation for one year, along with a woman named Rita (Maya Rudolph). Bowers is chosen for the assignment because he is statistically the most average man in the Army, while Rita is a hooker ordered to do some community service; however, Bowers and Rita are forgotten when the military base where the experiment took place is closed down, and when they wake up in the year 2505, Bowers finds himself living in a society where intelligence has taken such a landslide he's now the smartest man in the world. Can Bowers save America from its own remarkable stupidity, and he can he get the dunderheads around him to believe what he says? Produced under the title 3001, Idiocracy also stars Dax Shepard as Bowers's numb-skull lawyer, Stephen Root as a judge, and Terry Crews as Camacho, a former porn star and professional wrestler who is now president of the United States. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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57% liked it

58,942 ratings

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41 critics

R, 1 hr. 24 min.

Directed by: Mike Judge

Release Date: September 1, 2006

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DVD Release Date: January 9, 2007

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Brawndo! Idiocracy not sure & frito Rollin' with the President! Idiocracy
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Flixster Reviews (8,851)

  • fb791220692
    March 4, 2012
    fb791220692
    A brilliant concept in need of a better movie. Idiocracy isn't bad - it's got some genuinely funny moments, and I also respect Luke Wilson a lot more than I used to (he's always been a poor-man's version of Owen Wilson to me). But the movie slowly devolves from great, genuine sat... read moreire into foolish nonsense, as if the stupidity of the Earth portrayed in the film's story rubbed off on the film itself, and there's practically no character development in sight.
  • rjayhutchinson
    December 26, 2011
    rjayhutchinson
    While it's not much funnier than any other comedy, Idiocracy features quality comedic performances from Wilson and Shepard, who manage to entertain us through 90 minutes of idiocy. Ultimately, though, the film isn't much more than a mildly-funny diversion.
  • 5oclockcoffee
    November 17, 2011
    5oclockcoffee


    "Is the essence of life comic or tragic?"


    Brave New World, 1984, Alphaville, Sleeper, Idiocracy. While Godard kept the same cold and grim atmosphere of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell's novels, Woody Allen made a comedy of a future society. More than thirty years a... read morefter Allen's Sleeper, Mike Judge, taking the same road, uses a sort of slapstick humor to present a very plausible coming reality. Having a tragic or a comic perspective, the main point of concordance among these five works is the pessimism - but have in mind that Idiocracy is a satire, that's why it is done in the same models of the culture it is criticizing.

    The future may not have been as hopeless as Huxley and Orwell feared, but we start to see their predictions here and there, dressed as liberty, modernity and other concepts that hide milder forms of control and totalitarianism. Perhaps the highly mechanized individuals of Alphaville seem "too much" to us. Perhaps the orgasmatron of Sleeper or the "Ass" movie that "won eight Oscars that year, including best screenplay" in Idiocracy seems too much "funny" to be taken seriously, but we can't deny the latent discomfort we feel. If Alphaville made me think and amazed me with its aesthetics, and Sleeper pleased me with its silly-intelligent jokes, Idiocracy really worried me.

    In Alphaville, Godard brings the importance of the language as a direct influence in thoughts and attitudes. The lack of words like love and conscience, for example, made people of Alphaville "to forget" certain emotions. What Godard may not knew at that time was that it wouldn't happen a suppression of emotions, but an exaltation of them, specially the positive ones, i.e. "happiness". Words were not taken off of the dictionary, but they were replaced by emoticons. One of the greatest hits of Idiocracy is the hospital receptionist that doesn't need to think, only to listen to what the patient is saying and select a button with an icon based on that: for "my head is just killing me", for example, there's an emoticon of a gun pointed to the head of a sad face. The absurd of this scene is that it doesn't seem absurd at all. It is actually, and within the proper proportions, of course, something quite familiar nowadays. There's no need to wake up in 500 years to realize that a poor vocabulary leads to common sense and empty or childish arguments. All we need to do is to access our favorite social networks and thousands of examples will jump in front of our eyes. The problem is that things are very subtle today, what makes us think, for example, that coming to wear branding on our clothes like it happens in Idiocracy is something impossible to happen. As if we already didn't! Every time we "like" a product or a company on Facebook, we are advertising it. Not to mention that lots of things we use are not products but labels. It's curious that Idiocracy was released around the same time that Twitter was created, and some similarities can be noted.

    - Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
    - Why do you keep saying that?
    - 'Cause they pay me every time I do.

    The only thing that is missing here is the at sign. Brought to me by @Carl'Jr. Can't you picture that?

    The world is already full of publicity disguised as simple sentences. And we are already "strolling" slogans. But, hey, maybe things won't turn out that bad.





  • TheDudeLebowski65
    November 15, 2011
    TheDudeLebowski65
    Mike Judge does it again. He directs yet another great satire film, one that will make you laugh and provide you with an entertaining hour and a half. Mike Judge knows how to effectively create good humor using the simplest ideas. Office Space was a comedy about how crappy work c... read morean be for people, and it turned out to be a great comedy. Idiocracy for example is a future dystopia populated by idiots. There's nothing clever about the idea, it's simple, and that's the beauty about mike Judge, that's his genius. In Idiocracy, Mike Judge crafts yet another great comedy using the simplest ideas, and it works. The cast that Judge directs here are all hilarious in their parts, and though the film may not be perfect, the film has enough laughs to be a memorable film that delivers a good time. The jokes are good and the story is quite original. The cast are great and Mike Judge directs yet another good comedy that brings on big laughs. Idiocracy is not the best comedy that Mike Judge has ever made, but for what it is, it's a pretty good follow-up to his classic Office Space. I enjoyed how stupid this film was, and I mean that in the most positive way. In fact the whole point of the film was the stupidity of humankind in the future. Mike Judge pulls off something good here, something that's very funny, original and quite frankly memorable. Idiocracy is a fun comedy that has a good cast with plenty of idiotic jokes. If you're a fan of Mike Judge, you'll enjoy this film.
  • hunterjt13
    October 23, 2011
    hunterjt13
    An average guy and a prostitute participate in a military experiment gone wrong that results in both waking up in a future Earth where everybody is stupid.
    The corporatization of politics and America's obsession with violence provide the fodder for this film's satire, and though ... read morethese are fair points, I thought the film ran out of gas after its initial points were made. And the menace of Rita's pimp can never really be taken all that seriously by the audience, and it seemed as though the characters treated his presence with the same blithe inattention despite his frequent mention.
    The performances were all fine, Luke Wilson and Dax Shepard playing their normal roles.
    Overall, this film gets two stars for its concept, but beyond that, there wasn't much to sink one's teeth into.
  • vierasesine
    August 27, 2011
    vierasesine
    I didn't find this funny as much as terrifying.
  • DerekA101
    August 2, 2011
    DerekA101
    The opening act for this film and the idea itself, in my opinion, is VERY GOOD. But, wow, it quickly takes a nose dive once the second act begins. And the third act? Holy shit, what a horrible movie. It's scary how quickly this movie went from interesting to complete garbage. ... read more

    The scary thing about this is the predictions for the future. At the time this film was made, we didn't have a black president... and now we do. Mike Judge might be on to something here.....
  • CreedsDelight
    July 2, 2011
    CreedsDelight
    I'm Not, Sure (ha!) if this is one of the funniest, or smartest movies. This should send a message out about education. We can't let our entire population become idiots or else we'll live in a huge pile of trash. This movie is amazing and I've seen it so many times.
  • RCCLBC
    June 17, 2011
    RCCLBC
    Takes a great premise and then continues running with it longer after it stops being funny.
    It's an ammusing film, but nearly as funny or clever as it thinks that it is.
  • xXGiNoBiLiPRXx
    June 2, 2011
    xXGiNoBiLiPRXx
    In the future, intelligence is extinct.

    I can say IDIOCRACY is a good movie.It's effective, sometimes ingenious. To be realistic this movie is dumb as any movie could be, you'll see when you see it. Still, this movie is funny at times and hilarious at others. This movie is cool ... read morebecause of so many parodies or clever jokes around. There's an extra scene at the end of the credits so pay attention.

    The narrator (Earl Mann) explains that natural selection is indifferent to intelligence, so that in a society in which intelligence is consistently debased, stupid, irresponsible people easily out-breed the intelligent, creating, over the course of five centuries, an irremediably dim and sexually motivated dystopia. Demographic superiority favours those least likely to advance society. Consequently, the children of the educated élites are drowned in a sea of promiscuous, illiterate, proletarian peers.

    In 2005, Corporal Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), a US Army librarian graphed as the Army's "most average" soldier, and Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute terrified of her pimp, Upgrayedd (Scarface) (pronounced: upgrade, two Ds for "a double-dose of this pimping"), are guinea pigs in a secret, year-long, military hibernation project. They are sealed in their hibernation chambers, to be awakened a year later, but the experiment is forgotten when the officer in charge, Lieutenant Colonel Collins (Michael McCafferty), is arrested for having started his own prostitution ring under the tutelage of Upgrayedd. The military base is demolished, and a Fuddruckers (eventually devolving into Buttfuckers) is built on the site.

    Five hundred years in the future, their hibernation chambers are jarred open in the 'Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505', reviving both of them. Joe crashes into the house of Frito Pendejo (Dax Shepard), a typical, idiot citizen of the American future, whose dwelling is full of junk food with a prominent, giant television screen that is covered with adverts. His name, Frito Pendejo, is a haphazard combination of a product mascot (Frito Bandito) and the Spanish slang word insult.

    Frito is watching Ow! My Balls!, a popular TV program that lives up to it's name with very little artistic effort. Joe is disoriented and unable to exercise the discretion necessary to allow Frito to watch his program. Consequently, Joe is thrown out the window his capsule just broke. Joe stumbles into a hospital, where slacker Dr. Lexus, MD (Justin Long), diagnoses him as simply "'tarded" and "fucked up". Dr. Lexus panics on discovering that Joe has no barcode-tattoo on his left wrist, and so cannot be scanned for automatic debit payment. Having noticed that the date of a magazine he finds on the doctor's desk (Hot Naked Chicks and World Report, 3 March 2505) has the same date indicated on his bill, Joe finally grasps that 500 years have passed since the Army put him in stasis. He is alarmed by the sights of the collapsing world (decaying buildings, that are strapped to each other, mountains of garbage, etc.) and flees the hospital, only to be arrested at a Carl's Jr. junk food vending booth for not paying his hospital bill and for not having a barcode tattoo.

    At trial, Joe's public defence lawyer ("Attornee at Law") is Frito Pendejo, Esq., who stupidly helps convict him, citing the prosecutor's insistence that Joe is guilty and his own anger at Joe for damaging his house (in the garbage avalanche). Joe is imprisoned; a poorly-designed I.D.-tattoo machine re-names Joe as "Not Sure" (because he is not sure about his name as it appears on some form) and barcode-tattoos him as such. During a mandatory (and very simple) I.Q. test, Joe grasps just how stupid humanity has become. Easily escaping his dim jailors, Joe returns to Frito's apartment, asking him if a time machine exists to help him return to the past, to 2005. Frito claims there is one, but agrees to help only after Joe promises him billions of dollars from a savings account that Joe will open in the past upon his return. Frito is unable to understand the concept of compound interest, but takes Joe's word for it that Frito will earn 30 billion dollars minus the 20 billion dollars for expenses making 80 billion dollars.

    En route to the time machine, Joe and Frito find Rita. She does not know that she's been asleep for 500 years until Joe tells her, and even then, she expects Upgrayedd will find her. Frito leads them to a city-sized Costco, where Joe is re-arrested when he accidentally allows his barcode to be scanned; instead of prison, Joe is delivered to the White House. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews) has seen Joe's I.Q. test (scoring him as the most intelligent man in the world) and recruits him as Secretary of the Interior to correct the United States' food and crop shortages, dust bowl, crippled economy, mountains of garbage, and related matters. The other cabinet members are lampoons of contemporary politicians' nepotism, corporate loyalty corruption, and over-emphasis on sex appeal in political media coverage.

    Joe learns that water has been replaced with Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator (which Joe likens to Gatorade) a drink advertised as "rich in electrolytes", for virtually every purpose, including crop irrigation. Water is only used in toilets. Over time, the electrolytes in Brawndo accumulated in the soil, killed the crops, and caused the food shortage. After giving up on explaining to the cabinet that electrolytes are not conducive to plant-life, Joe reintroduces the practice of watering crops. However, overnight, the Brawndo Corporation's stock becomes worthless, causing great unemployment without visibly improving the crop situation. The angry populace riot, Joe is made the scapegoat, and is sentenced to a day of "rehabilitation"; an execution disguised as a public demolition derby, billed as "Monday Night Rehabilitation". Meanwhile, Rita discovers that the soil has made crops sprout in the fields. To save Joe, with Frito Pendejo in tow, she bribes a television cameraman to show the sprouting crops to the world. Before reaching the crop field, Frito and the cameraman are distracted by a sale at a Starbucks chain brothel franchise; only after they quarrel and fight does Frito remember his duty and film the crop sprouts. President Camacho sees the thriving new plants on the stadium's big-screen televisions, and grants Joe a pardon just as he is about to be incinerated with a flamethrower.

    At the celebration, Joe decides to stay and help repair American civilization; President Camacho names him Vice President of America. He also learns that the "Time Masheen" is just an amusement park ride, with a historical theme, wherein Charlie Chaplin was leader of the Nazi party who used dinosaurs to wage war on the world, and the U.N. (pronounced "The Un") "Un-Nazied the world forever". Joe serves a short term as Vice President, then is elected as Camacho's successor. Joe and Rita marry and have the world's three smartest children, while Frito Pendejo takes eight wives and fathers thirty-two of the world's stupidest children, echoing the introduction to the film.

    After the credits, a third hibernation capsule is shown opening, releasing a snappily dressed Upgrayedd into the world, who struts down the street, as a pimp is wont to do.

View All Idiocracy Reviews

Critic Reviews

Ann Hornaday
May 7, 2009
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

If the world is going to hell in any number of handbaskets -- as Judge so acutely demonstrates that it is -- you might as well hitch a ride in his. Full Review

J. R. Jones
October 3, 2006
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

The movie is bracing for its bile but ultimately more frustrating than funny. Full Review

Carina Chocano
September 5, 2006
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times

Judge has a gift for delivering brutal satire in the trappings of low comedy and for making heroes out of ordinary people whose humanity makes them suspect in a world where every inch of space, includ... Full Review

Sheri Linden
September 5, 2006
Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter

Often stingingly funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping ground.

Joshua Rich
September 2, 2006
Joshua Rich, Entertainment Weekly

Ow! My brain! Full Review

Robert Koehler
September 1, 2006
Robert Koehler, Variety

Mike Judge's Idiocracy is absolutely a satire for its time. What Judge is less sure of here than in his previous, perfectly pitched live-action comedy Office Space, is how to build a complete movie ar... Full Review

Nick Rogers
September 24, 2010
Nick Rogers, Suite101.com

This demented look at destructive mass consumption barely approaches feature length. Still, Mike Judge dots each appealingly cheap scene with spastic sight gags and offers fiendishly hilarious, fright... Full Review

Jeffrey Chen
August 18, 2008
Jeffrey Chen, Window to the Movies

Even if some of the gags about dumb people start becoming tiresome, it's linked to a sensation of discomfort that should make us legitimately worry about the direction we're headed in. Full Review

Louis Proyect
November 8, 2007
Louis Proyect, rec.arts.movies.reviews

So-so attempt at revisiting Sleeper. Unfortunately Mike Judge is no Woody Allen, nor is Woody Allen himself nowadays. Full Review

Rob Humanick
November 5, 2007
Rob Humanick, Projection Booth

You have to love a movie that imagines a dystopic future in which the U.S. President is a former wrestler and porn star named Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Full Review

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    • Secretary of Defense: Because Brawndo's got electrolytes.
    • Pvt. Joe Bauers: Why me? Every time Metsler says, 'Lead, follow, or get out of the way,' I get out of the way.
    • Doctor: Why come you got no tattoo?
    • Guy at Costco: Welcome to Costco, I love you.
    • Frito: For the smartest guy in the world you're pretty dumb sometimes.
    • Narrator: The number one movie was called: Ass. And that's all it was for 90 mins. It won eight oscars that year including best screenplay.
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Idiocracy Trivia

  • "Idiocracy" heralded a different turn of human events in relation to evolution and Darwin's theories. What was the year of the Great Garbage Avalanche that put humanity back on the right track?  Answer »
  • Which movie stars Luke Wilson and Mya Rudolph?  Answer »
  • How far into the future did Luke Wilson travel in Idiocracy?  Answer »
  • In the movie "Idiocracy" What year is it when Joe and Rita wake up from the Hibernation program?  Answer »
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