AKA
01-14-2007, 04:32 PM
Sometimes it seems to me that the studios can't differentiate between great, thoughtful cinema and disposable tripe.
This seems to be the case with Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that, in 2006 chose to give the abysmal, clichéd John Tucker Must Die a wide summer release while dumping Mike Judge's Idiocracy into (mostly) straight-to-DVD Hell.
There was a very limited theatrical release in September; the film only played on 125 screens (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Austin). In January, 2007, the film was quietly released onto DVD.
Idiocracy stars Luke Wilson as Joe Bauers, a man who works a desk job in the Army, and is just waiting for his pension to kick in. Unfortunately, he is chosen as a guinea pig for a top secret military experiment, in which he is to be "hibernated" (similar to being cryogenically frozen), and woken up after a year. Hibernating along with Joe is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute from the private sector.
Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong. Due to internal crisis at the Army base, Joe and Rita aren't taken out of hibernation after a year. In fact, they're both forgotten and remain in their slumbers for 500 years, waking up in the intellect-free year 2505, in which Joe is thought of by many as the smartest man alive.
The movie provides a great social commentary on the devolution of our culture, both in terms of intelligence, as well as the corporatization of our culture. Perhaps this is why Fox chose to hide it from the masses. It's also laugh-out-loud funny. It's my hope that Idiocracy, like Office Space, finds its audience on home video. Fox has made it perfectly clear they don't know how to market Mike Judge on the big screen.
Idiocracy also stars Dax Shepard, Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris), David Herman (Office Space) and Sara Rue, and features cameos by Stephen Root, Thomas Haden Church and Justin Long.
This seems to be the case with Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that, in 2006 chose to give the abysmal, clichéd John Tucker Must Die a wide summer release while dumping Mike Judge's Idiocracy into (mostly) straight-to-DVD Hell.
There was a very limited theatrical release in September; the film only played on 125 screens (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Austin). In January, 2007, the film was quietly released onto DVD.
Idiocracy stars Luke Wilson as Joe Bauers, a man who works a desk job in the Army, and is just waiting for his pension to kick in. Unfortunately, he is chosen as a guinea pig for a top secret military experiment, in which he is to be "hibernated" (similar to being cryogenically frozen), and woken up after a year. Hibernating along with Joe is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute from the private sector.
Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong. Due to internal crisis at the Army base, Joe and Rita aren't taken out of hibernation after a year. In fact, they're both forgotten and remain in their slumbers for 500 years, waking up in the intellect-free year 2505, in which Joe is thought of by many as the smartest man alive.
The movie provides a great social commentary on the devolution of our culture, both in terms of intelligence, as well as the corporatization of our culture. Perhaps this is why Fox chose to hide it from the masses. It's also laugh-out-loud funny. It's my hope that Idiocracy, like Office Space, finds its audience on home video. Fox has made it perfectly clear they don't know how to market Mike Judge on the big screen.
Idiocracy also stars Dax Shepard, Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris), David Herman (Office Space) and Sara Rue, and features cameos by Stephen Root, Thomas Haden Church and Justin Long.