Midweek Mention...Idiocracy

Idiocracy

Dan: We gonna do,

Sidey: We're gonna talk about a film, yeah. That's what we're gonna do.

Yeah, and Riggs, Riggs I think is the only person who's brought this film up before. It's been in a couple of top fives. Yeah. Idiocracy.

Reegs: Idiocracy.

Sidey: It was new to me. Yeah. Okay,

Dan: I had

Cris: I've never seen it either.

Dan: I had seen this before a long while back and I managed to to rope the missus in for this one as well.

Reegs: Oh, nice. Great. Yeah, well she was treated to a real subtle movie,

Sidey: movie, I think.

It's layered.

Reegs: It's lovely. Yeah. And it gonna, it takes some imagination because idios Idiocracy asks us to visualize a world in which America is a wasteland ruled by a crude reality T TV star who can't produce pronounce the word nuclear properly. And corporations manipulate and corrupt a population of the most vulgar and angry and stupid beyond all reason individuals you've ever seen.

Dan: Yes, so...

Reegs: fake news and pseudoscience. Yeah,

Dan: So far off the truth. Yeah.

Reegs: but it was made in 2006. Mike Judge movie.

Sidey: Yeah. Of... BS and Butthead fame. Yeah. Also did office space amongst other things.

Cris: How I knew the name. Yeah. Was it one of the Coen brothers

Sidey: No, I had to look that up. 'cause it's e it's Eaton.

Cris: Right,

Sidey: So I thought maybe that, 'cause they, they do pseudonyms and I thought maybe they'd just like knocked a letter out or something and it's not, it's a different

Cris: just, okay.

Reegs: Especially Agent

Sidey: yeah. So it starts off present day as in 2006, present day. With one of the Wilson brothers. There's two Wilson brothers in this. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Andrew, the older one, I never knew even existed.

Sidey: he well, okay. So let's just say right now

Cris: How many

Reegs: are

Sidey: Rivaling John Matrix for the best name in any film ever.

Reegs: Yeah.

Beef Supreme,

Sidey: Supreme.

Cris: amazing. Oh, is that, is that Beef Supreme? Is that the older brother?

Sidey: Wilson. Yeah.

Dan: And then when you think about it, you can see the family resemblance a little bit.

Cris: you see the family... He's probably the best looking out of all of them.

Sidey: Yeah, possibly.

Reegs: They're all dreamboats, so,

Sidey: Yeah, anyway, so this is it's the story of Luke Wilson, his character's Joe. And he has a job where he watches

Reegs: Well, we start off with some narration,

Sidey: Yeah, we do, actually,

Reegs: scene setting we're told it's almost like a fable. There's some, like, militaristic music, and, and it comes up, and it says about as the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, and natural selection had once favoured the, the intelligent and the strong and the...

Fast and now just headed

Sidey: It's the family tree stuff, isn't it?

Reegs: favouring other traits and instead we get like this caption of a smattering of porn stars and wrestlers and other things

Dan: everybody who was having babies left, right and centre was basically the, the lower IQ.

Sidey: It splits, doesn't it? It gives you a couple sitting...

On a sofa and they say, well, we're not ready to have children yet. We need to make sure that everything's right

Dan: The market

Sidey: make sure the markets are the right place. And then it cuts to some rednecks and they're just having a million kids and their family tree is like, comedically just like populates the whole screen.

Reegs: You flash back then to

Sidey: Do you see

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: way.

Dan: You flash back then to this kind of professional couple a few years later. They've aged a little bit, but they're still not ready. The market isn't quite. there and it's almost ridiculous to be thinking of it right now and then we go back there's more babies on the other family tree and and babies are having babies and all kinds of going on and on and you go back to the older couple who are now kind of fraying at the edges

Sidey: dead. He's had a heart attack, but they've frozen some sperm and some eggs.

Cris: No, the eggs. Yeah, the eggs, yeah.

Dan: yeah. And she's still kind of looking for somebody. And

Reegs: Yeah, he he passed away masturbating to provide a semen sample for their IVF. That's how he died, Trevor.

Sidey: way everyone wants to go.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: But then we do meet Joe.

Reegs: So, he's like a slacker in he's a military slacker, basically he's in the library and he explicitly states he just wants to do his eight years so he can get his pension.

Dan: He's got a cruisy job. He's just sat there in the back. Somebody comes. He says, not sure. And they go away again. I mean, he's been doing it for years.

He doesn't have to, to speak. He kind of follows the mantra when he heard it, what is it? Lead, follow or get out the way. So he was very happy of getting out of the way. And just keeping his head down.

Reegs: But he's suddenly selected for, for an assignment specifically him. And as we'll come to learn, it's because he's the most average man that they could find in the military.

Average on every metric that you can imagine. Plus he doesn't, he's an orphan and doesn't have any siblings and is unmarried. So, nothing had happened. So specifically selected for the job, which is which is shown pretty quickly through a slideshow that also features quite a lot of prominent pimp upgrade who, yeah, he's going to

Dan: really good, that, actually. So, yeah, the...

Reegs: going to be selected for a mission that they're going to test this hibernation pod that they're going to.

Put people into kind of stasis. They sleep for a period of time and they can send their best soldiers into the future

Dan: the future. That's right. It's 12 months. He's going to have to sleep in this pod and they've also not been able to recruit internally for the female who's going to go in the other pod.

So, the, the guy who's doing the presentation, he's some kind of captain or, or, and he's delivering it to the colonels. He starts going through his kind of pimp life experience and how he's managed to find this, this prostitute whose pimp upgrade will let her go for a year as long as some charges are dropped and and he gets his money and things.

But then you've really got to understand about pimp life. He starts going into it and they go, no, no, just stop that. Stop that. And he. fires through about 25 slides of him at various sort of stages in the night of like hangover style almost at the

Sidey: That's right, Yeah, this was Rita played by Maya Rudolph. Yeah. It was weird to me to see her as a prostitute because I, I've only seen her in the sort of, I wouldn't say latter years, but more recent films.

And,

Reegs: Well,

Cris: more like Mumsy, you know, recently,

Sidey: Well, she was just, I, I, stuff like bridesmaids and, and onwards. And, and this is, she's hot, she's wearing like, you know, skimpy kind of tight clothing with a lot of cleavage and it's like, fine then, she's in a whole new light. kind

Reegs: Added to your internet search history, basically.

Yeah.

Dan: cleavage and it's like, fuck. Add to your experiment and they closed down, they're given some kind of, you know, injection to make him sleep as some income pipes and tubes going into him.

Reegs: Luke Wilson also completely oblivious to the point of being ridiculous to the fact that she is a prostitute. Yes. She sort of circumvents talking about it a bit, and then he, even though about finding out about upgrade thinks she's an artist and that's her boyfriend.

So yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

Dan: yeah, no, exactly. So she She, for him is just an artist who's going in there to, to get some money or something. And instead of waking up in a year's time, they wake up in 500 years. 500 years

Reegs: Yeah, Because,

Cris: given this thing, no, we go get given this story of how it happens consequence of

Sidey: it's the. Yes, the no natural. It's the extrapolation of what they've told us about the how the breeding is going that every generation is just getting stupider and stupider and there's no plan in the work.

It's kind of like kind of like Wally where there's just rubbish everywhere and I think it what kicks it off they say is the great rubbish our garbage avalanche. Yeah. You see a truck just dumping something on an absolutely enormous like mountain of rubbish and it just falls and that kicks off.

Their pods like sliding down and smashing into is it Dax Shepherds? Flat?

Reegs: because the the general who was protecting the project got taken away and arrested for being involved in a prostitution ring as we saw in the video.

So, and then nobody knew about the experiment. It was hush hush. And is we see the passage of 500 years illustrated by the restaurant Fuddruckers having its logo changed from like Fuddruckers to Duffruckers and eventually to Buttfuckers to show the dumbening of.

Dan: Yeah, society. And yeah, L Luke, Joe, He, he wakes up In this pod, in Kind of just this Rubbish.

Reegs: in, in the apartment of Frito pco.

Yeah. Who's baiting?

Dan: Pincheko. Yeah. He's baiting he's

Reegs: in his sort of shit seat.

Sidey: Masturbating in his TV screen as well, he's watching man gets hit in the balls. How am I balls? And then, but then there's a million other things around the screen, but obviously, like, they're just so dumbed down and watching this shit, and it is literally just a man going from different scenarios, like, getting kicked in the balls, or landing on a fence, or all this sort of shit, and he's loving it.

Dan: Tube.

Reegs: It's like getting kicked in

Dan: yeah. The future looks okay if you just wanna sit around baiting and watching TV all day. And then he's kind of. Taken from this paradise by Joe who's woken up in this pod behind him and he doesn't really act too surprised He's just bothered that he's being spoken to

Reegs: He wants rid of him

Dan: Yeah, it results in punching him in the face and pushing him out the window

Reegs: So Joe ends up at the hospital then. And this obviously derelict and falling apart, which he's not really noticed.

Dan: Gauging what the hell has gone on and

Sidey: he's 500 500

Dan: ahead, and he starts there at the doctor's to see some dates on...

Reegs: he starts there at the doctor's office, and he gives some dates to her.

Three probes. One goes in your mouth, one goes in your ear, and one goes up your butt. And then the guy's like, hmm, hang on a minute, and swaps them around. You don't know which is which. Very good. And eventually he gets to see pot smoking doctor

Sidey: Justin Long. Yeah.

Reegs: And he diagnoses him as being, unfortunately, they use quite an unfortunate word now, really.

They use the retarded word, which is quite a bad word now

Sidey: isn't it?

Well, there's loads of stuff now where it shows that even since 2006, it's aged quite badly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. In terms of some of the language that's used, because there's a couple of times where as mixed. Yeah. Casually. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. I think the police say it at one point, but at this point he's just, he's.

Because he's, he's not super intelligent, but relative to these guys now, he is. And in fact, it comes, it comes across later in the plot that he's the most intelligent man in the world. Yeah. He's gonna solve all their woes. But because he doesn't speak the way they do, they refer to him as being retarded or a fag.

Yeah. And you're like, oh dear.

Reegs: he's,

Dan: oh dear. Because they're sort monosyllabic, like...

Sidey: this,

Reegs: to it, because they're sort of grunting, almost monosyllabic like, culture of people. They're barely communicate and they're all medicated and

Dan: barely communicate And we know

Reegs: and the corporations have taken over.

Sidey: all corporation y. And

Dan: And we know this because there is this narrative that, that, there's narration,

Sidey: Well, it's this bit. It's kind of this bit at the hospital with Justin Long, where he asked him to scan. They're all barcoded and he notices that he's unscanned. He's unscanned. And so he Calls the police and this is the thing that kind of kicks off the chain of events.

So eventually he's captured and he's forced to put his arm in this machine. When he's put on That's right, who Yeah, he turns on him

Reegs: Eventually he's captured and

Dan: But, I, I think, yeah, he gets this kind of tattoo barcode. He gives his name is Not

Sidey: because he's all he's all disorientated and he's like what's going on he's answering these questions and the first thing that he says is i think that it picks up as sure and then he wants to get his first name so he's got this picture his idea of him like scrambling in the seat with the name of not sure but now he's Got this scan on his barcode imprinted on his wrist that is able to be captured whenever he's out and about.

Because he breaks out of prison, doesn't He yeah. It's on the run. It's not exactly

Reegs: a heist thing, this. He just says that he's in the wrong queue and they send him out there. And then even if they did have the wherewithal to shoot him, they've got sentry guns outside that shoot and destroy each other, so.

Dan: Yeah, that's right, yeah, it just carried on turning, didn't

Cris: even the technology is not really advanced.

Sidey: It's really easy to outsmart that and it's really easy to outsmart the people because Rita is trying to get some cash or some food from a vending machine and a guy comes up to her, recognises that she's a prostitute and she says, I charge by the hour, but I can't see you for a couple of days but you've still got to charge, so he's like handing

Dan: oh

Reegs: The money.

Sidey: You

Dan: baby!

Reegs: Oh baby, You make me wait good!

Sidey: wait another

Reegs: wait another two days.

Dan: wait three days! He's like, yeah, pushing it on.

Sidey: She's quite smart with it, she's

Dan: Exactly,

Sidey: on to it straight away, yeah.

Dan: That's what I mean, she's very Tongue in cheek about the whole thing. She's just looking at him like they're fucking mad.

She hasn't got this.

Cris: it's also at this moment, she has still hasn't realized that it's 500 years. She's like, how much has changed in one year? Yeah. You know, when she kind of looks around, she's like, damn.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What happens? Yeah. But.

Cris: yeah, anyway,

Sidey: They go on the run, don't they? And because of his wrist scan, he's captured and forced to take a test.

Reegs: He he went to the time machine. He

Sidey: That's right, yeah.

At Costco. Yeah,

Reegs: him back at Costco, yeah.

That's where he got his law degree. And Starbucks is a place where you go to get handjobs as well, inside the world's most enormous Costco. And they were allowed to use all those logos, which is quite, like, crazy when

Sidey: Well, we can get onto that at the end, because it's quite interesting. Is there a

Dan: in there as well? yeah,

Sidey: That's where you get your handjobs,

Reegs: as well? yeah, this is

Cris: That's where you get handjobs normally, no?

Sidey: You can do, but I don't think they advertise it quite as openly as they did in this movie, yeah,

Cris: yeah.

Reegs: but... That's

Dan: We were born too early. Yeah.

Cris: What?

Reegs: Yeah, and this is where he gets scanned and then this is where he's delivered to the White House where President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho which is Terry Crews, he's a five time Ultimate Smackdown Wrestling Champion and Porn Superstar.

Yeah,

Dan: He's

Sidey: Wrestling Champion and porn these

Dan: The big guy out of he's the big guy out of Brooklyn Five Five.

Sidey: Yeah. 9. Brooklyn, yeah. We see him take his test, his IQ test, and it is absolutely ludicrously basic, and they can't believe that

Reegs: it.

Sidey: it. He's trying to shield jamming a circle into a square.

Reegs: and the problem is that the, the world, he's recruited basically as secretary of the interior because of the crop shortages and a dust bowl and a crippled economy. So, you know, he's a pretty sharp guy, actually, president Camacho in this world of morons.

Dan: Yeah, well, he's good at self preservation

Sidey: but His approval rating is, sort of, on the slide, but he knows how to

Dan: Well, he can pull out a gun every now and again, shoot that in the air and just tell everyone to shut the fuck up while he says, we're going to fix it, House of Representatives, we're going to fix it.

And the smartest guy in the world, he's going to do it. We got him now.

Sidey: one week.

Dan: in, he sets up that he's going to fix this. He's going to fix that and everything in one week.

Sidey: We see the cabinet, don't we? It's like some stupid

Reegs: It's like a mix of nepotism, and people who won contests, and just, yeah, his friends, that sort of thing, so,

Dan: Doing less than the most other people to to fix anything But they go into the fields because that seems a good a place as any to start on fixing the crop problem and he realizes that Water is actually an old thing.

Reegs: Wait, it's from the

Dan: yeah that water's just for the toilet. The plants are living off like gatorade or something with Electrolytes in it. And

Reegs: braunau It's a thirst.

Dan: Brondo. Yeah,

Sidey: That's right.

Dan: And everybody's on this all the time. And we kind of learned that the company Brondo company had taken over the water company, the FDA and everything else a few hundred years ago.

And so they just decided to market and push Brondo into everything, including brushing your teeth and because it's got electrolytes.

Reegs: Exactly. And that's what you need.

Dan: so water's just for the toilet.

Reegs: Yeah. So Joe recognizes this might not be a great idea and says why don't you put water on and he can't

Dan: the toilet?

Reegs: from the toilet. Can't get anybody to he tries explaining it to them in multiple different ways.

You see him with graphs and stuff like that. Eventually tells him that you can talk to plants and the plants have told him that they need water. So the president says, All right, I'll give it a bash. Unfortunately, that immediately crashes the economy because basically everybody works for Brondo or buys Brondo in some way.

So suddenly with the Turning off of Brawndo to the water to supply with no immediate benefit. Joe is sort of public enemy. Number

Dan: Yeah. And

Cris: I have to say, sorry to interrupt, but it was very swift, the fact that their share in the stock went to zero. As soon as he puts water on one crop, or somewhere on some crops, all the shares go to zero.

Reegs: is a subtle movie,

Sidey: go.

Reegs: Chris. It's, you know,

Sidey: It likes to take its time to explain these concepts to you. But yeah, they did rush that through. And

Dan: and we find our hero in a arena surrounded by

Reegs: Well, actually, I did have one observation, Dan, that is in scenes that are very difficult to imagine, a mob attacks the seat of power in Washington. Eventually eventually

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: taking, eventually taking over actually the White House itself as they drag him off.

I just wanted to mention that because it's so difficult to, Yeah.

Dan: that because it's so difficult to... Yeah, yeah, no, that's

Sidey: no, that's right, just a fantasy world.

So his punishment for causing all this uproar is, you know, like a gladiatorial battle against monster trucks with large weapons

Dan: what was

Reegs: dildo things?

Sidey: What flaccid...

Reegs: And he's got a sort of flacid, sort of purple

Dan: Well, they, they've also realized that he's escaped once. So they're not taking any chances and they've tied it, they've chained him to a rock, which is about the size of a small car. It's it needs to be taken, lifted with a crane or something, anywhere he wants to go. And instead of unlocking him when they put him into his

Sidey: the rock of triumph,

Dan: And they just dump it on the back. So he's trundling along.

Sidey: little bit running man. It's a little bit gladiators. So there's two, I think there's two monster trucks already in the arena. And then there's this giant one with a huge metal dildo on the front spinning around. That's so big.

Reegs: it was, it was something to do with our sex.

Dan: Yeah, it was like butt thruster or

Reegs: something

Sidey: it can't get through the archway to get into the arena, so it keeps, like, going till it eventually knocks it down. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. It takes

Sidey: And he does, he does something that causes the two other ones to crash into each other and explode. Yeah. And that's when Beef Supreme... The Yeah.

Reegs: I didn't, I was unaware of this Wilson brother until this moment.

Sidey: yeah

Reegs: so yeah, Beef Supreme I think has a flamethrower,

Sidey: does indeed, yeah. Flame grilled.

Dan: who's been

Sidey: well, he's, Maya's gone out. They've, they've got, she's gone to see one of the people in the studio behind the scenes, nicked a camera or take, force him out. And they've gone into the field to see what's happening and lo and behold, some of the crops have now sprouted, they've germinated, they've come

Dan: There's lines of green

Sidey: and so they're trying to get that broadcast, it's very much like the Running Man actually, on the main screen so that everyone can see that actually what he said was true and it will, you know, we'll be able to do

Dan: kind of clung to the microphone that's been hoisted high above the arena now um is a is a kind of trying to escape from this flamethrower which then getting lowered down so just as he's about to be taken out and burnt to a crisp the president steams in and takes Out beef supreme, and saves the day and says wait a minute.

This guy's just got his motherfucking pardon

Reegs: Yeah so, declared a hero, Joe is invited to stay, but he's wants to go back in the time machine which they then go and visit the time machine turning out to be a theme park ride where in Charlie Chaplin was leader of the Nazi party and he fought

Cris: to be fair, that was actually quite funny.

Dan: Yeah, that's right, they went through kind of like a Willy Wonka world of history on this.

Reegs: Yeah, gonna do it. So, but anyway, he'd already made his decision that he was happy to stay in the future with Maya Rudolph.

And it, and the movie ends with him having the three smartest children alive and Frito Pendejo having 27 of the stupidest or something by eight different women. And I believe that is how it ends.

Sidey: a, there's a post credits.

Reegs: There is a post credit. Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: Right. I didn't

Sidey: see that. With Upgrade.

Reegs: I don't see that. Upgrade. Upgrade also was in a hibernation pod.

So her recurring nightmare of Upgrade turning up in this future turned out to be true.

Dan: He's coming back for

Cris: I've seen, have you seen that, Dan? Did you, did

Dan: No, I didn't catch that bit. So that's, that's a bit to keep watching right to the

Reegs: at the very end, yeah. For Idiocracy 2, which I'm sure will be made any moment now.

Sidey: will be made at the moment. Well, let's jump straight into the numbers. The budget for it was two and a half million. okay. Winner or loser at the box office. Oh, it's a winner

Dan: sure will

Cris: Yeah. I can't see this as a winner.

Reegs: Oh, probably a loser at the box office, I would think,

Sidey: This didn't even do half a milli, 495, 000, because...

Reegs: released, was it particularly?

Sidey: it? When the studio saw it, they fucking shit themselves about all the frequent harsh critiques of recognisable corporations, and they wanted to just... Chuck it out on DVD just to get rid of it but it was contractually obliged to have a theatrical release So it got one week and one week only before they binned it and sent it straight to DVD hell

Reegs: because what we haven't

Sidey: no, absolutely no marketing for it whatsoever.

They didn't fucking put it out. Some of

Reegs: a, like a deeply angry and stupid movie. Like really

Sidey: but some of the cinemas because it was so, there was no marketing They just had it titled as Untitled Mike Judge Project

Reegs: Brilliant, brilliant. Oh, it's better than that with Dessert.

Sidey: It's just, it's like a, you know, it's rage against the machine of and you know, you're watching it now thinking this is as subtle as a sledgehammer, but also like you said, some of the shit.

Reegs: documentary as well.

Dan: Yeah,

Cris: There's so much that applies in real life and you think when you watch the movie you think this is stupid. But actually, yeah,

Reegs: It

Cris: this happened. Yeah.

Reegs: yeah, exactly. It's

Cris: happened already.

Sidey: you didn't have to wait 500 years. It's accelerating to this point now.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: that's the, yeah, that's the maddest thing.

It didn't take 500 years. We're pretty much there. Yeah, it's It's got its faults, definitely,

Reegs: Yeah, I worry there's some really deeply hideous politics at the centre of it. Like the eugenics stuff is really nasty. Like you can't ignore that. That theme in there is, is pretty horrible, but,

Dan: Yeah, and some dated language,

Sidey: Language is

Reegs: I didn't know. I didn't. Pick up on that at all, they might have edited that out on Disney because I did not hear a racial epithet from a white person, maybe, maybe,

Cris: Yeah. Definitely because I, I've seen it today.

Reegs: Alright, wow.

Cris: dunno, two hours ago and I was thinking, ooh,

Reegs: Yeah, that's,

Cris: I was thinking

Sidey: And then it's just calling people that are cleverer than you a fag and you're like, okay, wow. Well,

Dan: well they are from, you know, the most stupid people on the planet as well, so you kind of factor that into it, but,

Reegs: probably, you know, we would've also used language in that time that would be

Sidey: Yeah, no doubt.

Reegs: and probably also offer

Sidey: Yeah. But the idea is really good. I really enjoyed it, you know, taking those

Dan: it's an hour and a half long. It's silly.

Sidey: even that. I think it's about 80, 80 minutes. I think it is.

Dan: yeah. And it's got it had enough to keep us entertained just about, you know, because it is a bit silly and daft in parts. But if you're in the mood for a silly daft movie with a bit of. A point to it as well, with a bit of a moral to the story of, you know, this kind commentary,

Reegs: Well, just so how eerily prescient it was about a lot of shit that was going to happen not long after this movie was released that was going to be really powerful culturally. And also, did you notice their shoes, Side?

Sidey: I did notice the shoes. Did anyone else notice the shoes? Check out the drip.

Reegs: Is Crocs though.

That's the fucking drip. And I know how much you enjoy Croc side. I think

Sidey: Crocs. I'm so

Reegs: and I have had that conversation more than

Sidey: They were like completely unknown.

I was surprised that they actually existed at all. When I saw them, there's one where they're climbing up like a big pile of rubbish. I was like, that can't be Crocs. And they... They had no budget left for wardrobe and they just discovered this brand. It's a tiny little brand where they looked fucking hideous or whatever.

And they thought, Oh, we can use them now and see them before. And now obviously that every fucking hipster

Dan: massive. Yeah. It, it became a real

Reegs: I think they were, they were bought because they were, they were cheap and they looked like nobody would ever buy them.

So that's what

Dan: like from the future kind of things. And then it was quite a, a scene for Crocs. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. There you go

Reegs: yeah. so, strong recommend.

Cris: Yeah. If you haven't watched this, go give it a watch because I've, I can't even eulogize this enough.

Dan: I can't even eulogise