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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Last week's quiz movie in question, Mike Judge's Idiocracy, didn't turn out to be a DVD-and-cable smash hit like his first theatrical failure, Office Space, proving Mencken correct in reverse: no one ever made money overestimating the intelligence of the American people. Of course, it had considerable help in not finding its audience from 20th (or, as Gore Vidal calls it, 19th) Century Fox, which withheld it for over a year, then released it in a total of six cities, not including New York. An Esquire article about the filmmaker reported that Judge couldn't even get studio approval to show his interviewer the film's trailer!

Do you suppose Fox's burial of the film could have anything to do with . . . this?

Idiocracy, once titled The United States of Uhh-merica, is a brutal assessment of where the country is going intellectually-- downhill, like the garbage avalanche that starts the story. When Army Pvt. Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson, perfectly cast as a total mediocrity) wakes up in the future, it's in a country that's become so stupid that he finds himself the smartest guy in it. How'd it get that dumb? Here's the opening of the film to explain it:

Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen are merciless in their depiction of our moronic future, filling the film with great visual gags, like:

And then there's the non-stop advertising everywhere, like:

("Warning: The Surgeon General has one lung and a voicebox but he could still kick your sorry ass." Which reminds me of the national favorite movie, Ass-- ninety hilarious minutes of a naked rear end that occasionally breaks wind, winner of eight Oscars including Best Screenplay. )

Sure, there's plenty of Butthead-level humor and the film as a whole is not the home run that Office Space was, but it's so ambitious in its scope and so scathing in its satirical loathing of corporate culture and American politics (and people) that only dumbasses wouldn't find it funny. And, apparently, they didn't-- at least at Fox!

So congratulations and a lifetime supply of Brawndo to the following winners: Wayne Palmer, Corey Anderson, Peter Schilling, Sarah Bergstrom, Jim Moomey, Chris Hesler, Michael Mattson, Song-Un Lee, Jordan Linde, E. Yarber, Bill Hearne, mick, Michael Swanlund, Jack Sparks, Vince Tuss, Gus Mastrapa, Stacy Sarette, Henry Keene, and Nancy Louise Rutherford. And extra-stupid kudos to Ray Bothun, who wins this week's Grand Prize, The Metheny-Mehldau Quartet CD.

Posted by Steve Monaco at July 29, 2007 11:19 PM

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