Mike Judge’s satire ‘Idiocracy’ gets a timely 10th-anniversary rerelease
The Mike Judge film “Idiocracy” was a box-office disappointment when it came out in 2006.
Maybe the film was just ahead of its time.
At an election moment when “Idiocracy” might, ahem, resonate with a larger audience, the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain is bringing back the film for a 10th-anniversary screening.
On Oct. 4, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica will screen the film and hold a Q&A with Judge and star Maya Rudolph. The event will be live-streamed on various platforms, including Facebook, with members of the live audience able to ask questions. Other Alamo theaters around the country will also sell tickets and broadcast the event as well.. A voter registration drive will also be held.
“Whether you are voting for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or whether you just want to cast a write-in vote for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho,” Alamo said in a statement, “these options are all your right — but first you must register to vote.”
“Idiocracy” centers on a slacker Army librarian (Luke Wilson) who wakes up from a centuries-long cryogenic sleep to find that America has gone to seed, with all intelligence bred out of society and the most loudmouth and insipid elements now dominating. A former pro wrestler with rage issues and particularly inane tendencies (President Camacho, played by Terry Crews) now runs the country. That lends the film a political — and timely — dimension.
In interview, Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen have drawn parallels between the film and the current electoral climate. Crews told Time he sees the same comparison. “It’s not politics,” he said during primary season. “It’s...’Yo Mama.’”
Political entertainment that was originally designed as satire has taken on a more real-life dimension in this season of high rhetoric and higher dislikability among candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. At the Emmys on Sunday, “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus crystallized the sentiment with regard to her own show.
“I’d also like to take this opportunity to personally apologize for the current political climate,” she said in accepting the award for lead actress in a comedy. “Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels more like a sobering documentary.”
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