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Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film co-produced and directed by Mike Judge from a screenplay written by Judge and Etan Cohen based on a story written by Judge. The plot follows United States Army librarian Joe Bauers and prostitute Rita, who undergo a government hibernation experiment. Joe and Rita awake five hundred years later in a anti-intellectual society. The cast includes Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, David Herman, Justin Long, Andrew Wilson, and Brad Jordan.
The concept of Idiocracy dates back to a concept Judge envisioned in 1996. Judge finished a script with the working title 3001 in 2001, rewriting the film a year later. Filming took place throughout 2004 at Austin Studios and other cities in Texas. Idiocracy serves as a social satire that touches on issues including anti-intellectualism, commercialism, consumerism, dysgenics, voluntary childlessness, and overpopulation.
20th Century Fox was hesitant to promote the film, refusing to grant it a wide release, and did not screen the film for critics. The decision not to market Idiocracy was seen as unexpected, following the success of Office Space (1999), and led to speculation. According to Crews, the film's satirical depiction of corporations made the film financially unviable, while Judge attributed 20th Century Fox's decision to negative ; Judge stated that 20th Century Fox believed that the film would develop a cult film through its DVD release, similar to Office Space.
The film was released in the United States on September 1, 2006. Despite its lack of a major theatrical release, which resulted in a $495,000 gross at the box office, the film received positive reviews from critics and has since become a cult film.
Five hundred years later, a garbage avalanche disturbs Joe and Rita's hibernation chambers. Joe awakens in Frito Pendejo's apartment in previously occupied Washington, D.C. Asking for help, he is laughed at by the residents, who speak a mixture of "hillbilly, Valley Girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts." He enters a hospital, believing the army administered hallucinogenic drugs to him. Joe realizes the year upon reading a magazine and his hospital bill, but he is arrested at Carl's Jr. for not having a bar code tattoo and being unable to pay his bill. Joe is sent to trial; Frito represents him but alleges that he destroyed his apartment. The judge perceives Joe’s accent to have a homosexual demeanor, finding him guilty and sentencing him to prison. Rita resumes her job as a prostitute.
Joe is sent to a correctional facility, where a faulty identification machine registers his name as "Not Sure", and takes a simplified aptitude test. He escapes from prison after deceiving a guard by saying he had served his sentence and was scheduled for release. Joe visits Frito, who agrees to guide him to a time machine—located within a large Costco Wholesale store—after Joe promises to create a savings account in Frito's name when he returns to the 21st century, earning him billions in compound interest. With Rita, Joe and Frito enter the store, but Joe is arrested after his bar code is scanned. He is taken to the White House and appointed secretary of the interior by president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho due to extraordinary performance on the aptitude test. In an address, Camacho states that Joe will resolve unfruitful crop yields, and a stagnant economy, among other issues, within a week or face imprisonment.
Joe and Rita visit a crop field. Frito gives him a useless map to the time machine. Joe discovers that the country's crops are being watered with Brawndo, a sports drink whose parent company owns the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Communications Commission; the concentration of in Brawndo has destroyed natural topsoil, causing dust storms. Despite opposition to his plan in the form of circular reasoning from the Cabinet, Joe convinces Camacho to use water instead of Brawndo in irrigation. Consequently, Brawndo stocks severely depreciate, leaving half the country's citizens unemployed and Brawndo filing for bankruptcy, inciting riots as immediate improvement to the crops did not materialize.
At the Extreme Court, Joe is sentenced to public execution in a monster truck demolition derby against undefeated rehabilitation officer Beef Supreme. Rita and Frito discover that Joe's reintroduction of water to the soil allowed crops to grow. Rita pays a cameraman to broadcast the crops on the stadium's Jumbotron, prompting Camacho to grant Joe a presidential pardon. After discovering that the time machine is just an amusement ride, Joe becomes president and marries Rita, with whom he has "the three smartest kids in the world". Frito is appointed as the vice-president, and with 8 wives he ultimately begets "32 of the dumbest children to ever walk on Earth". The narrator states that while Joe did not single-handedly save mankind, he did set in motion the chain of events that eventually undid humanity's "dumbing-down".
The film was not screened for critics. Lack of concrete information from Fox led to speculation that the distributor may have actively tried to keep the film from being seen by a large audience, while fulfilling a contractual obligation for theatrical release ahead of a DVD release, according to Ryan Pearson of the Associated Press. That speculation was followed by open criticism of the studio's lack of support from Ain't It Cool News, Time, and Esquire. Times Joel Stein wrote "the film's ads and trailers tested atrociously", but, "still, abandoning Idiocracy seems particularly unjust, since Judge has made a lot of money for Fox."
In The New York Times, Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from the cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics because the company did not want to offend either its viewers or potential advertisers portrayed negatively in the film. This theory has been given extra weight by Terry Crews, who stars in the movie as President Camacho. In a 2018 interview with GQ Magazine, he talked of advertisers being unhappy at the way they were portrayed, which affected the studio's efforts to promote the movie. He said, "The rumor was, because we used real corporations in our comedy (I mean, Starbucks was giving hand jobs) these companies gave us their name thinking they were gonna get 'pumped up', and then we're like, 'Welcome to Costco, we love you' delivered. All these real corporations were like, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute' ... there were a lot of people trying to back out, but it was too late. And so Fox, who owned the movie, decided, 'We're going to release this in as few theaters as legally possible'. So it got a release in, probably, three theaters over one weekend and it was sucked out, into the vortex".
In 2017, Judge told The New York Times that the film's lack of marketing and wide release was the result of negative . He added that Fox subsequently decided to not give the film a strong marketing push because the distributor believed it would develop a cult film through word-of-mouth and recoup its budget through home video sales, as Judge's previous film Office Space had.
Professional reviewers largely treated Idiocracy as a social satire about anti-intellectual culture, mass consumption, and media driven politics. The Washington Post reviewer framed the film as uneven yet sharply observant, describing it as incisive and, in effect, difficult to dismiss in light of contemporary life. The Los Angeles Times reviewer similarly emphasized its extrapolations, presenting the future setting as a bleakly comic extension of present habits rather than a remote abstraction. For the Slate writer, the film's value lay in its political sting and its willingness to treat popular culture as a subject for moral argument, even while acknowledging the discomfort built into its premise. Empire reviewer went further, casting it as a comedy that couples entertainment with an agenda, pointing to its attacks on corporate influence and television culture as central targets.
Several critics highlighted the film's inventiveness in details and isolated jokes, while differing on how consistently those parts add up to a complete story. Variety reviewer commended the premise and the broad satirical strokes, but argued that individual scenes often ended before they developed, producing stretches where the laughs diminished even as the concept remained strong. The Austin Chronicle reviewer offered a related distinction, suggesting that the gags frequently outperformed the scenes built around them, and describing the delivery as flat even while crediting the film's overall vision as accurate in its diagnosis of cultural decline. The Washington Post critic also described structural drawbacks such as intrusive narration and overly explanatory passages, though this did not prevent a largely favorable appraisal of the film’s satirical force. Slant Magazine reviewer, by contrast, portrayed the film as scattershot in how it organizes its ideas, implying that the cultural critique can feel undisciplined even when its anger is recognizable. The LA Weekly reviewer likewise treated the premise as compelling while judging the execution more disposable, describing the satire as a quick hit rather than an expanding argument.
Critical discussion often centered on the film's lowbrow surface, which some reviewers saw as essential to the satire and others saw as a limitation on its reach. The A. V. Club reviewer argued that the film's deliberately vulgar register was part of its method, noting that sharp satire can be misread as an endorsement of what it depicts, and treating that risk as built into the project rather than a simple miscalculation. Empire critic made a similar case from a more approving stance, presenting the film as funny precisely because it keeps its critique tied to popular language, branding, and television spectacle. Slate Magazine writer, however, stressed that the central premise carries an uneasy edge, treating the comedy as potent while also characterizing its logic as troubling and, at points, cruel in what it implies about intelligence and social worth.
A number of critics connected the film's reception to its unusual distribution and minimal promotion, which several reviews treated as part of the story of how it reached audiences. Empire reviewer detailed Fox's decision not to screen the film for critics and its sparse theatrical rollout, portraying this handling as a major reason the film was not widely seen at the time. The Slate writer framed the release pattern as a form of institutional discomfort with the film's targets, presenting the quiet rollout as consistent with a satire that attacks corporate and media power. Film Threat reviewer likewise emphasized the limited release and lack of advertising, contrasting that treatment with what the review described as a genuinely funny film and interpreting the mismatch as evidence of tension between the filmmaker and the studio. The Los Angeles Times and the Austin Chronicle both described the film as effectively dumped, with the latter suggesting that this kind of dismissive handling resembled the institutional stupidity that the film itself lampoons.
Overall, critics ranged from enthusiastic approval to outright rejection, with many praising the film's satirical bite while reserving criticism for uneven craft or thin storytelling. The A. V. Club reviewer gave the film a high grade and treated its lowbrow approach as a strength, while Empire reviewer awarded the maximum star rating and urged readers to seek it out despite its mishandled release. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reviewers both leaned positive, emphasizing sharp observation even when noting narrative and structural weaknesses. Mixed reviews from Variety, Slant Magazine, LA Weekly, and the Austin Chronicle tended to separate the premise and individual jokes from reservations about pacing, scene construction, or the film's ability to build a sustained narrative around its ideas. Entertainment Weekly stood out among the listed reviews as sharply negative, assigning a low grade and suggesting that the film's gestures toward warning the audience did not translate into a satisfying comedic experience.
Comparisons have been made between the film and Trump's first presidency. An article for Collider pointed out the ways in which Trump's positions echoed the political decisions of the characters in the film in areas such as science, business, entertainment, environment, healthcare, law enforcement, and politics. have spawned comparisons to Trump and characters in the film. The comparisons resurfaced when Trump became president again in 2025.
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