7 Feb 2007 @ 14:11, by Unknown
The movie was released on DVD on January 9, 2007.
Mike Judge's film, Idiocracy, has had one of the weirdest theatrical releases ever. According to Cinematical, "Twentieth Century Fox considered postponing the release indefinitely, then decided at the last minute to give the film an extremely limited run in only six U.S. cities, which did not include New York. The studio did not publicize the movie one bit: no trailers, no ads, and only two stills from 2004 that everyone on the internet used in their online reviews. Overall, the film did only moderate business after its Sept. 1 release, and quickly faded from the public eye."
I don't know, maybe Twentieth Century Fox expected an innocuous crude comedy about some improbable farcical future, and what they got instead was more of a movie that reflects some of the excesses of our crude farcical contemporary society - and it isn't innocuous: Idiocracy does make fun of FOX News as well as of corporate chains like Fuddruckers and Starbucks. The plot also include some elements about a fictional drink manufacturer company (Brawndo) controlling large swathes of the U.S. government (to the detriment of mankind). In an interview with Esquire, Judge uncovered that Fox had slashed his postproduction budget, causing him to ask Robert Rodriguez to help with some special effects. The story is that the budget cuts might have been part of Fox's retribution, and the studio might have released the film only to fulfill a minimal contractual obligation.
This is a short synopsis from The Guardian:
Luke Wilson plays ordinary Joe Bowers, chosen to be frozen by the military in 2005, who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism, TV and fast food. Everything's branded, and people have names such as BMW, Mountain Dew and Frito. TV features the Violence Channel (its signature show: "Ow, My Balls!") and the Masturbation Channel ("Keepin' America 'batin' for 300 years!"). The President's a Smackdown champ and porno superstar, and there's a mulleted wrestler on the billion-dollar bill. And everyone in the future thinks that Joe Bowers, suddenly the smartest man on earth, "talks like a fag".
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