NEWS_ARTICLE.RttP{The Pentagon Paid $998,798 to Ship Two 19-Cent Washers}

As the movie begins, vignettes and a voiceover illustrate that as unintelligent people enthusiastically out-breed competent people, future society will become inevitably and irreversibly dumber.

In 2005, Army librarian Joe Bauers (Wilson), a completely average man, and Rita (Rudolph), a prostitute who is terrified of her pimp, Upgrayedd (up•grade), are selected as guinea pigs for a year-long secret military hibernation project. The pair are sealed into coffin-like chambers. Unfortunately, after a scandal in which the officer in charge is arrested on prostitution charges, the experiment is forgotten, the military base is demolished, and a Fuddruckers (devolving into Buttfuckers in the future) is built on the site.

Five hundred years later, Joe and Rita's containers (unearthed in the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505) open, reviving them. Joe lands in the apartment of Frito Pendejo (Shepard), an idiot. Feeling woozy, Joe visits the hospital where Dr. Lexus (Long) diagnoses him as simply "tarded". Lexus panics that Joe has no bar code tattoo and can't be scanned for payment, while Joe panics that 500 years have passed, and the world he sees out the window is falling apart. Joe flees but is arrested at a Carl's Jr. vending booth for failing to pay the hospital bill, and for not having his left wrist tattooed for identification and payment.

Joe's defense lawyer at trial turns out to be Frito, who stupidly helps convict him. In prison, a poorly-designed I.D. machine records Joe's name as "Not Sure" and barcodes him. During a mandatory I.Q. test, Joe realizes just how stupid humanity has become. Easily escaping the prison, Joe returns to Frito's apartment and asks if a time machine exists to help him return to the past. Frito says there is, but will help only after Joe promises him billions of dollars in interest on a bank account Joe will open in the past.

Enroute to the time machine, Joe, Rita and the lawyer enter a city-sized Costco, where Joe is arrested again when his new barcode is scanned. Instead of going to jail, Joe is taken to the White House: President Camacho (Crews) has seen Joe's I.Q. test (which made him the world's most intelligent man) and recruits him to solve the world's food shortages, crippled economy, mountains of garbage, etc. Joe learns that water has been replaced by Brawndo (a sports drink apparently rich in electrolytes), even for crop irrigation, causing the food shortage.

After Joe reintroduces the use of water (now only used in toilets) for crops, the giant Brawndo Corporation's stock plummets, causing massive unemployment. The angry population riots, and Joe is sentenced to a Running Man/Mad Max/demolition derby style "rehabilitation". Meanwhile Rita sees crops sprouting in the fields. To save Joe, she bribes a TV cameraman to show the crops to the world, with Frito going along. But before they reach the field, they are sidetracked by a sale at Starbucks, now a brothel chain. It is only after Frito knocks out the cameraman for calling him a "fag" that he remembers his job. The President sees the thriving new plants on the stadium big screens and pardons Joe just as he is about to be incinerated by a flame thrower. Soon afterwards, Joe becomes the Vice-President and eventually, President. He abandons his plans to return to the past so he can work on saving the future; he and Rita eventually marry and have three children.

At the celebration, Joe learns that the "Time Masheen" is just a bad amusement park history ride where Charlie Chaplin is shown as the leader of the Nazi party, dinosaurs are used as living weapons, and the U.N. is called the "UN", having "Un-Nazied the world forever". After the credits, we see a third hibernation capsule open, releasing a snappily dressed Upgrayedd into the world, intent on tracking down Rita.

[edit] Cast
Luke Wilson as Army librarian Private Joe Bauers (Not Sure), an average guy
Maya Rudolph as Rita, a prostitute working for Upgrayedd
Dax Shepard as Frito Pendejo, public defender
Terry Crews as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, porn star and champion wrestler
Brendan Hill as Secretary of Energy
David Herman as Secretary of State
Sara Rue as Attorney General
Stephen Root as Judge Hank "The Hangman" BMW
Thomas Haden Church as Brawndo CEO
Justin Long as Dr. Lexus
Andrew Wilson as Beef Supreme
Jennifer Vasquez as Camacho's Groupie (uncredited)
Scarface as Upgrayedd

[edit] Critique of modern society
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Apart from being a comedy, the movie also harshly criticizes modern society and consumerist capitalism. For example, product brands are everywhere. Clothes are entirely covered with brand prints. The view of one street is completely taken up by flashing neon advertisements. Indeed, the central conflict of the movie, the replacement of water by Brawndo, serves to illustrate how far corporations went (in the movie's imagined history) in extending their power to control everything. Furthermore, most of the characters in the film have brand names as first names such as Frito Pendejo, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, Hormel Chavez, Formica Davis, Hank BMW, and Tylenol Jones.

Modern garbage management is criticized as well, as 'junk avalanches' are one of the main problems in their society, causing the plot of the movie to unfold.

In addition the handling of presidential elections and the judicial system are heavily criticized. Both are reduced to spectacular but superficial events. If there is a problem, the president simply starts 'rocking' or fires his gun and people don't bother to complain any more as they are having a good time. The judicial system is merely a show in an arena to entertain the people, having devolved into a Jerry Springer-type kangaroo court.

Reality television and gross-out humor also come under heavy criticism. In the year 2505, the most popular program on television is a show entitled Ow! My Balls!, which features Hormel Chavez, the "star" of the show, getting repeatedly injured in the crotch. Television watching itself has been replaced with 'bating,' a term apparently derived from masturbation, in which the viewer drops his or her pants and sits on a La-Z-Boy equipped with a built-in toilet while consuming food and Brawndo, while watching a screen bordered with intrusive advertisements.

The top-grossing movie of the time is Ass, a film that shows 90 minutes of a man's buttocks farting from time to time.

[edit] Contemporary cultural references
Aside from the contemporary brands featured, contemporary fictions and quirks have been transformed, by stupidity, into fact in the film's future. In an early scene, Clevon says, "Shit! I got too many damn kids!" while holding a "Penn Pavel's Beer", a fictional brand seen in the film The Truman Show.[1] At the end of the film, the "Time Masheen" historical ride features Charlie Chaplin as the leader of Nazi Germany and the cause of World War II, interpreting Chaplin (who played a Hitler-esque role in The Great Dictator) literally as Hitler. Another reference by the end of the film is seen when Joe, Rita and their kids are sitting in the oval room of the White House. Rita, having given Joe the impression that she is an artist to cover up her former occupation as a prostitute, is seen doodling with watercolors on a canvas, trying to make a portrait of Joe. When the painting is finally revealed, its content all but a little better than a kid's drawing, it looks comparatively little like Joe, but has a rather remarkable resemblance to George W. Bush.

[edit] Production
Early working titles included The United States of Uhh-merica[2] and 3001. Filming took place during 2004 in and around the cities of Austin, San Marcos, Pflugerville, and Round Rock, Texas.[3] Test screenings around March 2005 produced unofficial reports of poor audience reactions.[citation needed] After some re-shooting in the summer of 2005, a U.K. test screening in August produced a report of a positive impression.[4]

[edit] Release issues
As of February 2005 the film's scheduled release date was August 5, 2005, according to Mike Judge.[5] In April 2006, a release date was set for September 1, 2006. In August, numerous articles[6] revealed that release was to be put on hold indefinitely. Idiocracy was released as scheduled but only in seven cities (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Mike Judge's hometown, Austin), and expanded to only 125 theaters, not the usual wide release of 2500-3000 theaters. According to the Austin American-Statesman [7], 20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, did nothing to promote the movie — while posters were released to theatres, no movie trailers, television ads, or press kits for media outlets were provided. The film was not screened for critics.[8] Lack of concrete information from 20th Century Fox led to speculation that Fox may have actively tried to keep the film from being seen by a large audience, while fulfilling a contractual obligation for theatrical release prior to a DVD release, according to Ryan Pearson of AP.[9] In the New York Times Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from a cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics.[10] John Patterson of The Guardian suggests it is a result of the film's anti-corporate message, noting that in the film Starbucks now delivers handjobs, and the motto of Carl's Jr. has devolved from "Don't Bother Me. I'm Eating." to "Fuck You! I'm Eating!"[11] Also in the film, a Carl's Jr. vending machine cheats a customer, Fuddruckers' name gradually morphs into "Buttfuckers", the fictional Brawndo corporation buys the F.D.A. and the F.C.C, and the Fox News Channel is depicted in unflattering newscasts (20th Century Fox, which distributed the film, and the Fox News Channel are both owned by the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corporation).

[edit] Reception