--- title: "Idiocracy" year: 2006 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/idiocracy" fi1m_score: 68 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-16T23:38:04.393304+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T23:38:16.371829+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Idiocracy (2006) Directed by Mike Judge · 1h 25m · MPA R · Comedy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller **Fi1m score: 68** · Critics 72 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* Five hundred years of progress and the only thing still working is the advertising > Mike Judge’s comedy about a future too stupid to water its crops is funnier and nastier than its reputation as a prophecy suggests. The world is built with real care; the plot is not, and the narrator will not stop explaining. ## Synopsis Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), an army librarian and the most average man on his base, is sealed into a hibernation pod for a one-year trial alongside Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute hired to make up the numbers. The trial is forgotten. Five hundred years later the pods spill out of a mountain of rubbish and Joe walks into 2505, where the skyscrapers lean, the crops are watered with a sports drink called Brawndo, and a lawyer called Frito (Dax Shepard) is the only person who will speak to him. Joe wants to find Rita and a way home. First he has to survive a hospital, an arrest and a courtroom in which the prosecutor’s argument is mostly shouting. ## Review Mike Judge, who made [*Office Space*](https://film.one/film/office-space) (1999) and *Beavis and Butt-Head*, has spent a career being interested in stupid people, and here he gives them the planet. *Idiocracy* opens with a short lecture on evolution, freezes an ordinary man and thaws him out in 2505 to discover that nature has stopped rewarding brains. It is a one-joke film. The joke is a good one, and Judge and his co-writer Etan Cohen find more angles on it than 85 minutes would seem to allow. What they do not find is a plot. The world is the achievement. Darren Gilford’s production design gives us a city where the skyscrapers lean on each other and are tied together with cable, where every surface that can carry an advertisement does, and where a single shop the size of a county has its own law school. Debra McGuire dresses the population in sponsored clothing and puts President Camacho in a sleeveless flag and a belt of bullets. Tim Suhrstedt shoots it all in flat, hard daylight with no attempt to make it handsome, which is right. There is a hospital whose diagnostic machine is a row of pictures, and a doctor (Justin Long) who reads the results as if in a language he half remembers. We laughed hard in the first half hour, and we can say exactly where. The doctor’s diagnosis. The courtroom, in which the prosecutor’s case is mostly volume and Frito, for the defence, agrees with him. The discovery that the crops are dying because the country has been watering them with a sports drink, and the boardroom in which the drink’s executives explain that water is what comes out of the toilet. That scene is the film’s best writing, a room of people who cannot follow a two-step argument and are furious at being asked to, and Luke Wilson plays Joe’s patience in it like a man trying to coax a cat down from a tree. Wilson is the right kind of blank. Joe Bauers is average by design and Wilson does not fight it; he is decent and dim, and when he starts being called the smartest man alive he looks as if he has been handed someone else’s coat. Terry Crews, as Camacho, a former wrestler and adult film performer who governs by shouting and firing a machine gun into the ceiling, is the film’s engine. He plays the president as a man who knows the job is a performance and means to do it well. Dax Shepard’s Frito is pitched at one note and holds it. Maya Rudolph has almost nothing to do and does it gracefully; Rita is a woman the plot needs found and returned, and nobody asks her what she thinks of the future. The trouble is everything between the jokes. The plot is a list of errands: find Rita, find the time machine, fix the crops, stay out of prison. David Rennie’s cut has the joins showing. Scenes stop rather than end, and a narrator is wheeled in every few minutes to say what we have just seen and what we are about to. The voiceover tells us the population is stupid again and again, long after we have noticed. The narration is the film’s largest fault, because it treats the audience the way the film’s future treats Joe, and it does not read as a joke. Theodore Shapiro’s score is mock-heroic brass and we could not hum a bar of it the next day. There is also a meanness in it that we felt. The prologue divides humanity into a careful, childless professional couple and a fecund man in a vest, and the film’s sympathies are not in doubt. Every idiot on screen is poor, loud and covered in logos. We laughed at them, then felt slightly ashamed of ourselves, then noticed the film had not felt anything at all. Judge’s *King of the Hill* was fond of the people it mocked. Here the fondness survives only for Frito, who is kind to Joe in his way, and after an hour the contempt gets tiring. Since 2006 the film has acquired a reputation as a prophecy. We would rather not add to it. Being right about the future is not the same as being good about it, and no film is improved by the news. What is on the screen is a fast, ugly, frequently funny sketch stretched to feature length. Watch it at home with someone who will forgive the narrator. It runs 85 minutes and carries a 15. *Fi1m score 68, published 16 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like Idiocracy. The praise clusters on the satire: Mike Judge’s picture of an America dumbed down by advertising, junk television and contempt for thinking is called merciless, pitch-black and, by the reviews written a decade or more after release, accurate. Several single out the visual gags and the naming of real brands. Luke Wilson’s everyman draws warm words from Empire, and Terry Crews’s President Camacho is picked out by Consequence among the comic performances. The reservations are about everything except the ideas. Variety finds the plot and scenes weaker than the concept; Slant calls the execution scattershot and compares it to a good episode of Futurama rather than a classic; Radio Times thinks the hero too blank to care about. The Guardian blames studio interference for that. Two later pieces add that the film’s jokes about class and intelligence have aged badly. The spread is narrow: three mixed notices, no hostile ones. ### Reviews we read (11) - **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (A-): The critic finds the film a smartly lowbrow and unrepentant satire that literalizes societal devolution into stupidity and anti-intellectualism. It singles out the visual gags and commentary on crass consumerism and advertising for particular praise. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/idiocracy-1798202014) - **Los Angeles Times**, Carina Chocano (80/100, inferred): The critic praises Judge's merciless satire on a dumbed-down future, highlighting its spot-on skewering of corporations, junk culture, and systems like healthcare. She notes the plot is silly but the nightmarish extrapolation makes it a cathartic delight. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-sep-04-et-idiocracy4-story.html) - **Empire**, Nick de Semlyen (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's sharp satiric high-concept about a dumbed-down future and its gutsy comedy with something to say, noting Luke Wilson's sweet central performance and the funny execution despite its slight length. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/idiocracy-review/) - **The Guardian**, John Patterson (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a splenetic, pitch-black satire with venomous anti-corporate bite that names real brands and skewers consumerism, TV and anti-intellectualism. While not a masterpiece due to studio interference, it is endlessly funny with strong cult-hit potential. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/sep/08/johnpatterson) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (70/100, inferred): The critic presents the film as a scathing political satire of a dystopian, moronic future America undone by anti-intellectualism and vulgarity, reduced to slogans and reality TV. It serves as an ominous portrait of contemporary political trends like those associated with Sarah Palin. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/further-watching-idiocracy-b9g5sfwmq6z) - **Variety**, Robert Koehler (65/100, inferred): Koehler finds it a timely satire on a moronic future, strong on big ideas and corporate critique but weaker on plot and individual scenes; praises the visual gags and rebellious spirit despite flaws. [Read](https://variety.com/2006/film/markets-festivals/idiocracy-1200513822/) - **Radio Times**, Lucy Barrick (3/5): Judge takes the dumbing-down of the USA to its logical extreme in a nightmarish vision of a lowest-common-denominator future that is hilarious and depressingly believable. Although the everyman protagonist is too much of a blank slate to care about, the gaudy visuals and cynical gags compensate. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-misni1/idiocracy/) - **Slant Magazine**, Fernando F. Croce (60/100, inferred): The review deems the film more like a solid episode of Futurama than the subversive classic its troubled release suggested, though it credits the nervy concept and cultural ire. It singles out the scattershot execution and lack of rhythm as drawbacks while noting the bracing satire of ignorance and corporate greed. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/idiocracy-dvd/) - **Den of Geek**, Chris Longo (80/100, inferred): The critic views Idiocracy as a prescient cult classic whose satire on societal dumbing down and corporatization feels eerily relevant today. They single out its accurate predictions about politics and consumer culture for praise, while noting some criticism regarding classist undertones. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/idiocracy-is-the-dystopia-we-deserve/) - **Eye for Film**, Jeff Robson (80/100, inferred): The critic praises Mike Judge's satire for its accurate predictions about mass culture, fame, and politics becoming entertainment, while noting the gleeful skewering of crass commercialism alongside affection for the flawed characters. Strong comic performances and laugh-out-loud set pieces are highlighted as making it well worth seeking out or rediscovering, though it runs out of steam in places. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/idiocracy-2006-film-review-by-jeff-robson) - **Consequence**, Clint Worthington (75/100, inferred): The critic views the 10-year retrospective on Mike Judge's cult satire as both self-satisfied and eerily prescient, praising its broad world-building, comedic performances (especially Terry Crews as President Camacho), and low-budget realization of a dystopian future while critiquing how some class and intelligence themes have aged poorly or been misinterpreted. [Read](https://consequence.net/2016/09/welcome-to-costco-i-love-you-idiocracy-10-years-later/) ## Details - **Director:** Mike Judge - **Director:** Mike Judge - **Screenplay:** Mike Judge, Etan Cohen - **Story:** Mike Judge - **Cinematography:** Tim Suhrstedt - **Editor:** David Rennie - **Music:** Theodore Shapiro - **Production design:** Darren Gilford - **Costume design:** Debra McGuire - **Producer:** Mike Judge, Elysa Dutton - **Cast:** Luke Wilson as Joe Bauers; Maya Rudolph as Rita; Dax Shepard as Frito; Terry Crews as President Camacho; Anthony 'Citric' Campos as Secretary of Defense; David Herman as Secretary of State; Sonny Castillo as Prosecutor; Kevin McAfee as Bailiff - **Runtime:** 1h 25m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 1 September 2006 - **Genres:** Comedy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller - **Budget:** $30 million - **Box office:** $495,303 ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $4.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $4.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AE, AT, AU, BE, BG, CA, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HR, HU, IE, IL, IS, IT, JP, LT, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SI, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Office Space* (1999), Fi1m 80: Judge’s earlier, kinder comedy about stupidity, this time confined to one open-plan office. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/office-space.md) - *Sleeper* (1973): Woody Allen wakes up two centuries on and finds the future equally absurd and better dressed. - *RoboCop* (1987), Fi1m 91: Verhoeven’s Detroit is sold to us in adverts between the shootings; the joke is the same. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/robocop.md) - *Sorry to Bother You* (2018): Boots Riley’s satire of work and television goes stranger than Judge dared and keeps its nerve. - *Brazil* (1985), Fi1m 83: Gilliam’s bureaucratic nightmare has the paperwork Judge’s future has forgotten how to fill in. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/brazil.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/idiocracy