The Stout Republican

New feature on Ye Ol’ Stout Republican: The Monday Movie Review, which for me happens to be the late, late, late Sunday review, but unless a fellow insomniac is cruising for conservative propaganda, then most of you will get it sometime on Monday. “But TRW!” you might be saying,”It technically IS Monday, so wouldn’t it then be-” To which I cut you off with a smoothly delivered “I hate you.” Because after all, I don’t know how to get to tomorrow by any other method then going to sleep tonight, and waking there by some means unknown to me. And if the notorious all-nighter is in order? Well then the schedule straightens itself out in the next leap-year. So enough of your wasting of my time, after all tomorrow doth quickly approach, onward to the aforementioned topic at hand…that I mentioned…that we’d get to… that I’d previously alluded to…-sigh- …A lack of higher education is to blame for that sentence.

The first movie of our new weekly segment took me to where Mike Judge’s new film “Idiocracy” was playing to an audience of 5 people, 2 of which accompanied me. Some advanced screening, or maybe a test audience? After all no previews have been airing on television, no billboards have graced the Golden State freeway with their presence….No, this was the opening weekend. I think I remember seeing a poster in the hallway by the bathroom of the theater itself, someone had tagged on it from what I recall…AND THAT’S IT! After some research I found that there was release date setbacks and low test-audience ratings, very interesting interview with the creator himself for “Esquire” if you like all the trivial background understandable being a movie trivia junkie myself (there was actually a desencant of Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, who’s name is Wyatt Earp).

So I find myself in an almost completely empty theater, watching a movie I’ve known nothing about, heard nothing about, and seen nothing about: The perfect scenario to be completely and pleasantly surprised. What an idea for a movie. The film is set in the year 2505 where Pvt Joe Bauers (played by Luke Wilson) thaws after being frozen for 500 years as a result of a military experiment gone wrong. The details of the how of it are funny enough to leave unspoiled by me, but I will give you the why of it. In his own time (2005) Bauers is your average (and I mean average) lazy, unmotivated, 30 something guy who doesn’t care that his life is going absolutely nowhere. He is a private in the military (the specific branch escapes me) where he is a book clerk for a never used library giving him the ability to watch TV and do nothing all day, which is fine with him. There’s a line in the movie to illustrate his personality in which he tells a senior officer that when told to “lead, follow, or get out of the way”, he always gets out of the way. The officer’s response is that, “You’re supposed to lead when you’re given those choices, or for Christ’s sake at least follow. Getting out of the way should make you ashamed!” To which Joe replies, “Well I’m not ashamed”. The gist of the story is that Bauers is going to be part of an experiment to freeze a human and thaw them in one year exactly, successfully bringing them back from the cold-induced coma. There is a female counterpart to the experiment as well who turns out to be a “painter” (you’ll get it) named Rita, played by SNL’s Maya Rudolph. As stated earlier something goes amiss and the couple wake up 500 years in the future in the year 2505. The human race in the year 2505 is for lack of a better explanation, stupid. The creative way of describing how the culture degraded into what Joe and Rita encounter is also humurous enough that I won’t give it away, suffice it to say that Joe and Rita are most likely the 2 smartest people alive upon their thawing. Thus starts a journey for the unlikely duo to get to a time machine that apparently exists in the future, so they can be sent back to their proper setting.

Mike Judge is the creative genius behind the TV shows “Beavis and Butthead” and “King of the Hill”, and the writer/director of the cult comedy hit “Office Space” (which if you haven’t seen, comrade, then my only advice to you is to go back to the Mother Country with the rest of the Communists), and he certainly did not let down on this newest installment on his list of achievements. The acting was great (for a comedy), Luke Wilson pulled his part off superbly since the role is very similar to what he’s done in the past, and Maya Rudolph was also believable in her role and even brought a charm to it…in a street trash sort of way. The supporting roles were hilarious including Dax Sheperd as a lawyer in the future named Frito, and a very funny role for Terry Crews as Comacho…The President of the United States. Though the story is ridiculous and unbelievable, I think it does a fantastic job of pointing out what America’s current shortcomings are, and where they may end up if careful attention is not given. My favorite and what I believe to be the most accurate of America’s possible future problems, is the degredation of the English language. Vocabulary is constantly shrinking as slang replaces more and more of the dictionary correct English words until the language has become barely recognizable as the language it once was. Also society becomes more and more accepting of profanty until swearing becomes a part of everyday advertising and entertainment (just whatch the way the restaraunt “Fuddruckers” devolves in the film). The ideas were great,if not completely thought out, leaveing you with a lot of “that wouldn’t work because” scenarios, and the ending came up short of stisfying in my mind, but I’ve come to expect that from comedies lately. From a production standpoint the movie had a very unfinished feel and felt more like an extended episode of a TV show than a feature film, definately a renter for that reason. Over all I really enjoyed this flick, a must see for fans of any of Mike Judge’s past work, and one to throw on the netflix list somewhere along line no matter who you are, you may just make a friday night a little better if you get this one unexpectedly.

I guess we need to come up with some sort of rating system so as to have a scale to weigh the movies to come. I’ll split up movies into four categories and grade them with the category in mind (obviously Billy Madison isn’t a 10 on any critics list because it can’t compare with any real good movies, but as a comedy goes it’s pretty damn good). So with the four categories being: Action, Drama, Horror and Comedy, and with Idiocracy falling into the comedy category, I’ll give it 7 of 10 possible stars.

Till next time the smartest human being of 2006 signing off,

-The Right Wing

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