In the future, the American President is a six time Ultimate Fighting Champion and porn star, clad in American flag spandex tights and a bandana, our time traveling average American protagonist, suddenly the smartest man alive, gets laughed at by the future dimwits for being well spoken and gets mocked for sounding 'faggy'.   Everyone in the future sounds like a dumb hillbilly speaking ebonics, and crassness rules the day - from Starbucks now providing handjobs and happy endings to sexually charged simpletons to the number one movie in America 'Ass', which featured a farting pair of cheeks for 90 minutes winning eight Oscars, including 'Best Screenplay',

It's a horrifying vision, full of blank stares and poor speaking, born out of Britney Spears and her hillbilly husband, the emptiness of Paris Hilton and the oversexed macho bravado of professional wrestling.  All told, the movie places blame on the low grade pop culture of today, and reinforces the point with an impassioned speech at the end of the movie trying to encourage everyone to 'read a book' and start thinking again.  I think the real target of the movie is actually young, rich couples, those folks with double incomes, hip downtown loft apartments, who drink too much and moan about how stupid the world is becoming. 

Mike Judge wisely sidesteps blaming one political party or thinking and instead blames the culture of America today -where reading and thinking are mocked, cheap celebrity lives are the cheap currency of the day and extrapolates this to five hundred years into the future.  Deep down, beyond the ridiculously vapid lives everyone leads in the future, the true point is the loss of family and thought.  I've never met Mike Judge, but can appreciate the value he places on family and raising children - and can see the emphasis on the importance and love he's found in raising his own.  It was only a month ago a good friend of mine, while talking about raising kids, told me, "It's so incredible in ways you'll never know."

It's a shame the movie studio basically ditched this movie - it opened in seven cities, and it's a tribute to Austin its still playing in this town.  After the first time I watched it, I was laughing so hard all I could think was that 98% of the country would be offended watching it, but now I'm reconsidering.  Seeing as how Mike Judge has produced some of the most cutting satire of the past fifteen years - Beavis and Butthead, Office Space and King of the Hill - I imagine Idiocracy will become a cult hit at the rental stores - and the very people it mocks - the retards who watch too much TV, the yuppies who can't find time to raise a family - will all walk around yelling out catch phrases from the movie - "Go away, I'm 'batin!", "You sound faggy", "It's what plants crave".  Just like Beavis and Butthead being embraced by the fifteen year old set playing frog baseball and un-ironically listening to Metallica, frat boys walking asking when the TPS reports are ready, this movie's satire probably will be lost on an entire generation, and perhaps, we're more doomed than even this movie suggests.