(2006) Here's an IQ test: If you think this movie is great entertainment, then you're an idiot. Selected for a top-secret Pentagon experiment because he's the most average representative of the population available without an immediate family, Army private Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) unwittingly becomes the male subject of the Human Hibernation Project. The female subject, Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute, is taken from the private sector, following an arrangement of dropping criminal charges and payment of fees to her pimp.

Intended to last only a year, before the experiment of their being dry frozen concludes the military base is closed and the project forgotten. During the garbage avalanche of 2505, the pair in separate pods wake up 500 years later when humanity, which has somehow survived the age of stupid (civilization's supposed complete collapse in 2055), has devolved and dumbed down - the result of allowing those with the lowest intelligence to reproduce the most offspring - into an era of morons.

Director Mike Judge co-wrote the screenplay with Etan Cohen, so what would you expect from the creator of Beavis and Butthead? Everything is devoted to sex and vulgarity; hair-loss and erectile dysfunction became the sole interests of science. The English language has deteriorated; a hospital is run like a McDonalds; justice is both blind and retarded; Fox News dominates the media; all the water except in toilets has been replaced by Brawndo's sports drink, resulting in the complete ruin of farmland. However, people drive small electric cars.

As an "unscannable" (lacking a tattoo identity), Joe ends up in prison with a new identity of "Not Sure," but "excapes" to team up with his inept lawyer Frito (Dax Shepard) and Rita. In search of the "Time Masheen," his only hope to get back to the past, Joe and his partners go to the mall where the greeter welcomes them: "Welcome to Costco. I love you."

Eventually he's arrested again and taken to the White House ("brought to you by Carl's Jr") to meet with President Dwayne Elizondo Camacho (Terry Alan Crews) because Not Sure's been found to be the smartest man in the world. "He's going to fix everything," announces the president, making Joe Secretary of the Interior in charge of repairing the economy and the agricultural disaster. If Joe can make things right within a week, he'll get a presidential pardon; otherwise, he'll go back to jail.

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way," says Joe to the president's cabinet. But Joe's initial efforts at first make the situation only worse. This movie might be high-brow intellectual fare for 2505, but for today it's awfully stupid.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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