Idiocracy
I had a Borders gift card to use from Christmas, and since I'm a new Miami-Dade Public Library System cardholder, I decided to not use it on a book, but on a movie. Well, Borders movie prices being the way they are, I had to get something new, while it was still in its initial price, before it hits the "25% more than full price" price. So I saw the movie Idiocracy by the cash register, and I picked it up.
Idiocracy is directed by Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame, and it stars Luke Wilson, and most importantly, Robert Musgrave. Robert Musgrave, if you didn't know, is the mastermind behind such brilliant characters as Bob Mapplethorpe from Bottle Rocket and... wellp, that's about it. So anyway though, the premise of the film is that Luke Wilson is part of a hibernation study, and he's supposed to be frozen for one year. He's chosen because he's completely average.
As things so often tend to do in comedies, the plan goes awry. He wakes up 500 years later, to find that humankind is so dumb that he's now the smartest man in the world. (the IQ test they give him is particularly funny, "if you have one bucket holding one gallon, and another bucket holding five gallons, how many buckets do you have?") Anyway, the movie interested me, because it was not marketed at all. Fox only sent posters to the 125 theaters that actually showed the film, no marketing materials, no press junkets, no trailers, no marketing of any kind. I really kind of hope that some day someone writes an essay about why this was not marketed at all, cause I think it'd be interesting. I only heard about it because of a short write up in Wired (or somewhere) I read around when it came out.
So it's a pretty funny movie, the satire is pretty pointed. And the menu on the dvd had me cracking up. All in all I'd say B to B- but I'd say it's definitely worth seeing as a study in how to make a movie unmarketable... or something.
Idiocracy is directed by Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame, and it stars Luke Wilson, and most importantly, Robert Musgrave. Robert Musgrave, if you didn't know, is the mastermind behind such brilliant characters as Bob Mapplethorpe from Bottle Rocket and... wellp, that's about it. So anyway though, the premise of the film is that Luke Wilson is part of a hibernation study, and he's supposed to be frozen for one year. He's chosen because he's completely average.
As things so often tend to do in comedies, the plan goes awry. He wakes up 500 years later, to find that humankind is so dumb that he's now the smartest man in the world. (the IQ test they give him is particularly funny, "if you have one bucket holding one gallon, and another bucket holding five gallons, how many buckets do you have?") Anyway, the movie interested me, because it was not marketed at all. Fox only sent posters to the 125 theaters that actually showed the film, no marketing materials, no press junkets, no trailers, no marketing of any kind. I really kind of hope that some day someone writes an essay about why this was not marketed at all, cause I think it'd be interesting. I only heard about it because of a short write up in Wired (or somewhere) I read around when it came out.
So it's a pretty funny movie, the satire is pretty pointed. And the menu on the dvd had me cracking up. All in all I'd say B to B- but I'd say it's definitely worth seeing as a study in how to make a movie unmarketable... or something.
posted by Mark Norman at 12:03 PM
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