Apropos of nothing, here’s a review of the movie Idiocracy.
When Idiocracy hit screens in 2006, it wasn’t supposed to be a prophecy. It was a satirical jab at a society careening toward a dumbed-down, consumer-driven abyss, with a few absurd touches thrown in for laughs. But nearly two decades later, Idiocracy has evolved from a cult comedy into an unsettlingly precise reflection of American life. In its exaggerated world of shameless consumerism, anti-intellectualism, and spectacle-over-substance, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we’re looking into a mirror—and it’s not a flattering one.
The story of Idiocracy follows Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), an entirely average Army librarian, and Rita (Maya Rudolph), a sex worker, who are selected for a military human hibernation experiment that goes wrong. They awaken 500 years later in a society where humanity has devolved into a cesspool of consumption, ignorance, and laziness. Think Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, except instead of waking up, as Buck does, to a bright, exciting future full of promise, Joe wakes up in a shithole. With a dwindling IQ baseline, Joe suddenly finds himself the smartest man in the world. With the help of Frito (Dax Shepard), his slack-jawed, TV-obsessed lawyer, Joe tries to navigate the farcical legal system, accidentally embarks on a high-stakes political career and eventually work his way back to a time machine that might not even exist.
Luke Wilson’s deadpan delivery works well as the bewildered everyman caught in the chaos of a profoundly dysfunctional society. His understated reactions offer a solid contrast to the exaggerated idiocy that surrounds him. Maya Rudolph, meanwhile, brings an unexpected warmth to Rita, despite the character being somewhat underwritten. Dax Shepard fully leans into the absurdity, delivering a performance that is simultaneously aggravating and hilarious as Frito, embodying the film’s core satirical point. Terry Crews as President Camacho is a gleeful standout, with his over-the-top bravado providing some of the film’s most genuinely funny moments.
While some of the humour lands brilliantly, especially when pointing out the ridiculous excesses of branding and consumer culture, other jokes fall flat, weighed down by the inherent bias of the underlying concept. The comedy works best when it leans into the absurd—like the idea of an economy driven by energy drinks and monster trucks—but loses steam when it seems to simply ridicule its fictional populace for their stupidity. There’s an imbalance that makes Idiocracy feel uneven as a comedy; its eagerness to lampoon ends up alienating as much as it entertains.
But it’s important to remember that the mirror Idiocracy holds up is cracked from the start, reflecting not just the flaws in society but also the film’s own condescension. The entire premise of Idiocracy begins from a deeply cynical, almost mean-spirited notion: that intelligence is being systematically bred out of humanity, and that the “stupid masses” are to blame for the world’s decline. It’s a perspective that reduces complex socioeconomic issues to an overly simplistic—and, frankly, elitist—punchline. The idea that the less educated or economically privileged segments of society are singularly responsible for the downfall of civilization is not only unfair but entirely dismissive of the systemic forces at play.
Therefore, there’s an argument to be made that Idiocracy isn’t mean-spirited enough. It treats the real villains of the piece—corporate oligarchs, technocrats, kleptocrats, and cynical grifters—with kid gloves, almost glossing over their culpability in favour of a nebulous sense of inevitability that exculpates the vested interests. The film’s satirical foundations lie in a Huxleyan vision of gullible debauchery leading to societal collapse, a future where indulgence and stupidity go hand in hand. But it overlooks how, in reality, the decline is far more orchestrated and intentional. As society has been systematically dumbed down, wilful ignorance has become intertwined with cruelty and bigotry, while rejecting knowledge and expertise has turned into a twisted badge of honour. This isn’t just an accident of history; it’s a deliberate manipulation by those in power—corporate overlords, political opportunists, and vassal media conglomerates—who have exploited divisions, sowed misinformation, and thrived on the chaos. We aren’t just slipping into Huxley’s world of hedonistic mindlessness; we’re being corralled into a technofascist dystopia, where misinformation and manipulation are tools leveraged by the powerful and the decline is not just inevitable but engineered to a degree beyond even the darkest Orwellian nightmare.
The film’s most biting prediction is the gleeful embrace of anti-intellectualism. In Idiocracy, society has effectively devolved to the point where intelligence is seen as a nuisance rather than an asset. People look to slogans, brands, and bravado for guidance instead of, say, experts or science. Today, that world doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it might have in 2006. When Idiocracy gave us President Camacho—a loud, gun-toting former pro-wrestler with more charisma than policy—we chuckled at the caricature. But recent years have blurred the line between satire and reality, as political platforms are often less about substance and more about spectacle. The dismissal of science, the rise of anti-expert movements, and the popularity of politicians who peddle slogans over solutions all suggest that Idiocracy was frighteningly on point.
There’s also Idiocracy’s dead-on jab at consumer culture, which reaches grotesque extremes in its world. Brondo, the sports drink that’s “what plants crave,” is a perfect emblem of the way branding overtakes logic and even public policy. We don’t need to stretch our imaginations to see this in action; corporations today frequently dictate policies, from environmental deregulations for oil companies to health decisions swayed by the sugar lobby. The scary part is, unlike Brondo, they aren’t marketed as jokes. They’re sold to us as “better choices” and “smart options,” even as the truth is often just a rebranded, corporatised reality.
But there’s also something telling about Idiocracy’s disdainful portrayal of the masses. It assumes a future where the populace’s collective stupidity is the sole driver of societal collapse, ignoring the powerful interests that benefit from an uninformed citizenry. The film doesn’t really acknowledge the role of corrupt elites, corporate greed, or systemic disenfranchisement. Instead, it points the finger downward, blaming everyday people rather than the structures that manipulate and fail them. While Idiocracy is scathing, it’s also startlingly incurious about the deeper reasons for why society might veer in such a disastrous direction.
One of the funniest—and now most painfully on-the-nose—choices Idiocracy made was to give Crocs the spotlight as the go-to footwear of the future. The costume designers picked them because they looked bizarre enough to suggest a world with no fashion sense and no standards. They assumed, surely, that no one would actually wear these clunky, ugly, rubber shoes. But, of course, as if on cue, Crocs would soon become a cultural staple. It’s as if the future reached right out of the screen, wrapped itself in branded rubber comfort, and decided the joke was too good not to make real. The footwear that once symbolised a society with no standards in a fictional future now symbolises just how close we’ve come to living in that future.
Perhaps the film’s most prophetic element is its world’s addiction to mindless entertainment, shallow spectacle, and the constant hum of content that dulls any semblance of critical thought. Idiocracy’s society has no time for reflection; the airwaves are flooded with absurd shows, nonsensical ads, and nonstop stimulation. Today’s social media-driven, algorithm-curated existence isn’t all that different. Viral content spreads faster than facts, fake news outpaces real news, and complex ideas are boiled down to one-liners. The populace is too entertained, too numbed, or simply too exhausted to consider or resist the consequences.
Idiocracy was never meant to be a roadmap, but here we are, living in a world where slogans, branding, and comfort footwear seem to hold more sway than science or reason. Mike Judge’s grim comedy aimed to show us a ridiculous world so detached from logic that it could never exist. Now, it’s not a satire we chuckle at, but a cautionary tale we’re reluctantly, awkwardly living out. But it’s worth asking: is Idiocracy‘s bleak portrayal helping us understand our predicament, or is it just another way to dismiss and demean those already struggling? In a world where a film’s strangest, silliest design choices end up on our feet and in our lives, it might be time to start taking Idiocracy a little more seriously—but not without questioning its condescending gaze, and certainly not without recognising that the real-world decline is far crueller, more orchestrated, and insidiously divisive than even this film dared to imagine and we shouldn’t wait 500 years to find a reason to find a way to change course.
