Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Idiocracy’

Written by Scott Edwards 

​There are many fears that people have in life, for themselves and for others. One of the greatest fears I have had is that none of our youth seems to care about history. How are you supposed to know where you want to go if you do not know where we have been? So many of our youth is under the understanding that if it did not happen to them, then it did not happen at all, and although I love to joke about this with my friends, it is not the way to understand, well anything. I am unsure what happened to our history classes in the school system, but something seems to be falling apart and even though it might involve teaching a touchy subject, it is better that our youth understands it now, rather than waiting to see it come out in a movie that is trying to make money instead of informing you of the truth.  

Joe Bauers is a stand out of the way individual who just wants to get on with his life with no problems. This is all well and good in his mind since he does what he is told and will never get in trouble for doing so. With such a calm demeanor, Joe has been picked for an army experiment that will change his outlook on life forever. Being joined by working girl Rita, Joe is about to be put to sleep for a year in a steel coffin, not to awaken until someone hits the button. But shortly after the experiment starts, the project is shut down and Joe and Rita are in for the shock of a lifetime when they wake up again.

Waking up five hundred years in the future, Joe finds himself in a society that does not seem to understand what taking responsibility is. As Joe wanders around the city, he is looking for help and when going to the hospital, he finds that everything has been dumbed down. Although he talks different and acts different, Joe is accepted as a special person in this society, but what he does not know is that when his I.Q. test comes back, he is the smartest man in the world. But this does not matter to Joe as he just wants to utilize the future technology and get back home with the help of a Time Machine that should have been created during his hibernation.  

Being out of place and out of time does not help the slacker from the past as even though the people are stupid, their technology is well beyond their means. While trying to get to the time machine, Joe encounters problems at every corner, but when he is finally captured by the police, he is made the Secretary of the Interior and is appointed to take care of all of the country’s problems. Joe has never considered himself a smart man, much less a leader but has to take a crack at solving at least one problem. With one thing that he knows for sure, crops need water to grow, Joe makes a massive change of removing the previous fertilizing liquid, Brawndo from the equation, but his change is costly as half of the country is employed by the massive company and they all automatically lose their jobs when the Thirst Quencher is no longer required. Being sentenced to rehabilitation, Joe has to fight for his life against an onslaught of oversized machines and the famed Beef Supreme. But Joe still has friends and when they see that crops have started to grow in previous dead fields, it is just a race against time to make it known.

After the first time I watched this movie, I was impressed, but when I watch it now, I think Mike Judge might be on to something. There are so many improvements that the world has made, even over my lifetime, but we seem to take it all for granted. Not needing to know things that happen behind the scenes in any process is a dangerous thing. Depending too much on technology and not enough on knowledge can lead to bad things, especially if the system shuts down. This could lead to one of the greatest downfalls of the race, if we don’t know how to fix the problem, read the manual that comes with the machine, much less write a set of instructions for someone else to follow. Happy Viewing.

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