Idiocracy

[MacGuffin]

Luke Wilson Goes to Sleep Until 3001
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Luke Wilson is set to star in Mike Judge's comedy 3001 for 20th Century Fox, playing a man who goes to sleep only to wake up 1,000 years in the future. Shooting is scheduled to start in mid-April.

Written by Judge and Etan Cohen, 3001 centers on Joe Bowers (Wilson), an average American who is selected for a top-secret hibernation program that finds him waking up and living among a society 10 centuries in the future. He finds that civilization is so dumbed-down that he is the most intelligent person alive.

Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill, most recently directed 1999's Office Space. He is next attached to direct Meat in the Freezer, also for Fox.

[Pubrick]

um yeah that's already been done, it's called Futurama.

specifically episodes 'The Day the Earth Stood Stupid', and 'The Why of Fry'.. two pivotal episodes explaining fry's role as savior of the universe via his connection to the Nibblonians. amazing stuff.

[RegularKarate]

I don't think the movie is called 3001 anymore... They're filming it here (as a matter of fact, I'm off to try out as an extra in about fifteen minutes) and the crew call has changed the name to "Untitled Mike Judge Film (Previously '3001')"

[modage]

Mike Judge Talks 3001
Source: Onion AV Club Tuesday, June 29, 2004

The Onion interviewed Mike Judge and he had a little to say about his next big screen feature:

"O: You mentioned that you're working on a movie now. Is that 3001?

MJ: Yeah, although I'm not going to call it that. It's set more like 400 years in the future. There have been so many movies about people being frozen and waking up in the future. This is mine. Apparently, a bunch of Futurama nerds are pissed off, because that's the year in which that show is set. You know, neither of us invented guys getting frozen and waking up in the future. But I didn't mean to set it in 3001 anyway—that was just a placeholder title.

O: What's the movie's current status?

MJ: We started shooting right in the beginning of May, in Austin. The basic premise is that most science fiction shows the future as being more civilized or more intelligent, and that's just not the way we're headed. Like, if someone made a movie in the late '50s about the year 2004, it probably wouldn't have had The Maury Povich Show, and gangs, and whatever. So this starts out as a documentary about how the people who are reproducing the fastest are guys who are too lazy to put on a rubber, and lots of highly educated people are waiting until they're 40 to have a kid, and then having one or none. It's kind of a sleeper movie about how, 400 or 500 years from now, a guy who's your average dumbass today is the smartest person in the world."

[RegularKarate]

Saturday, they said they were about a week from finishing.

Without giving too much away, if done right, this movie could be really damned funny.

***Possible Spoiler (since it's not listed on IMDB yet)***
Andrew Wilson plays "Beef Supreme"

[modage]

Bad news for "Office Space" fans: Less than a month before its most recent release date, Mike Judge's long-awaited follow-up "Idiocracy" has been postponed indefinitely. Starring Luke Wilson, Justin Long and "Office Space" scene-stealer Stephen Root, the flick tells the story of a common man who awakes a thousand years in the future to discover that he's the most intelligent person alive. Director/writer Judge is currently without a release date for the film, and rumors of a limited theatrical run are rampant. ...

[Kal]

What the fuck is this now? The release was supposed to be a year ago, it was already postponed for now...

[RegularKarate]

well, the word is that it's not very good and Mike Judge is ready to move on... he doesn't even really care if it gets a release.
I don't know how official that is, but I've heard bad things from people who've seen it.

Too bad since I was sure to at least be a spec in that movie.

[MacGuffin]

Limits to 'Idiocracy'
Source: Austin Chronicle

The good news is that Austin fans will finally get to see Mike Judge's futuristic comedy, Idiocracy, on the big screen. The bad news is that people in most other areas of the country likely won't. Idiocracy opens in limited – and very quiet, judging by the lack of a trailer and short notice – release on Sept. 1 in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and Toronto, a spokesperson for 20th Century Fox said. Whether the long-delayed, Austin-shot film will expand to other markets is uncertain. The announcement comes on the heels of a report on the MTV Web site that the film's release was "postponed indefinitely" with rumors of the dreaded limited release. Wrong on the first; correct on the second. Which leads to the obligatory questions: Is it that bad? Will film execs ever figure out Judge's humor? Is the film's star, Luke Wilson, cursed? (His Austin-shot directing debut, The Wendell Baker Story, should be filed under whereabouts unknown.) Lest we forget, Judge's Office Space was a dud at the box office but remains gold on DVD/video. The better news hereabouts is that Judge appears to be preparing for his next live-action feature, Meat in the Freezer. Oh, and you can check out the Idiocracy poster at www.impawards.com/2006/idiocracy.html.

[RegularKarate]

I saw this last night.

It's worth a few laughs if you don't have anything better to see, but it's kind of obvious when you're watching it that it just didn't quite work.
They use a narrator to fill in gaps in a lot of places.  I don't know if this is because the scenes explaining the plot were too long and not funny enough to sit through or because it just didn't make sense, but it's obvious that it's kind of covering for something.

It's very stupid, obviously, because that's what it's about, but if you can deal with dumb humor, it's pretty funny in spots.

I can see why Judge didn't really care about getting this out in the theaters and again why he's thinking about just sticking with animation from now on.

On a side note... I'm going to have to rent it because I'm in at least one second of footage and I'm actually recognizable (not just a little dot in the crowd).

[Ravi]

I'm going to have to rent it because I'm in at least one second of footage and I'm actually recognizable (not just a little dot in the crowd).

You're in the film and you're not even going to buy it?

[RegularKarate]

You're in the film and you're not even going to buy it?

Maybe I'll buy it... depends on the price... that's if Fox ever actually releases it on DVD.

[Gamblour.]

What scene RK?

I was actually really excited to see this, because some moron on FilmJerk said it was the best script he'd ever read. Maybe he contradicted that later, I didn't read beyond his first sentence. Anyhow, the film is very clever at first....pretty brilliant, actually. It sets up its thesis and goes from there, but it's obvious that this was a tv episode that was stretched far too thin. I mean, if you're going to make a movie about the world being stupid, it would be funnier to really understand the stupidity, not partake in it and just replicate the stupidity of today.

Moments when I thought the film would be really smart turned out to be completely forgotten. For instance, (mild spoiler for anyone who cares) there's a joke about FuddRuckers being changed, over time, to FuddBuckers and eventually Butt Fuckers. I thought it was, however immature, very funny because I thought that perhaps this future society didn't realize the humor in this progressive bastardization of the restaurant's name, in the way that language changes over time. Instead, it's just a joke about Butt Fuckers and that's it, no concept or wit involved.

Additionally, there's a point when the narrator explains that the language everyone spoke was a mixture of hillbilly, valley girl, etc. I thought this might be a clever exhibition of funny dialogue, etc, perhaps along the lines of Blade Runner's polyglot amalgam. Instead, as RK suggests, it seems like a narrative gap that uses a joke that's not relevant to the film at all, because they don't actually speak like hillbillies, just slow and stupid. It was disappointing.

I felt like there was so much potential, given the great thesis at the beginning and so many interesting ways it could go. Instead, it just resembles stupid stuff instead of satirizing it.

[RegularKarate]

What scene RK?

SPOILERS? (kinda)

I was present for the movie theater, the courtroom, and the stadium scenes, but the stadium is where you could actually see me.  It's a really really fast cutaway to a crowd shot of a few of us yelling.
I might be in more, but that's the only point where I went "hey, that's me".

[Ravi]

This one needed some rewrites and/or another pass in the editing room.

A movie like this needs a normal hero to contrast the craziness around him, but Luke Wilson is average to the point of being bland and uninteresting.  Maya Rudolph isn't that interesting either.  And there are certain logistical things I wondered about.  If these people are so stupid, how do they have electricity?  How does stuff get built?  Are all the futuristic gadgets a remnant from a smarter time?  Who is responsible for all the product placements?  Is there a secret elite keeping people stupid for their own purposes?  Is the whole world like this?

Some of the satire was pretty funny, such as the lampooning of certain mega-chains and the cheapening of politics.  It went further than I thought a major Hollywood movie would, but its not coupled with an interesting story or characters. 

You'll probably agree with the satire and you might even laugh here and there, but you won't necessarily enjoy the movie or care about what happens.

BTW, there were only two other people in the theater with me.