Combatting Idiocracy

By 2006, writer and director Mike Judge had created Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill, and Office Space, all immensely popular, controversy-stoking, highly-rated comedies. Nonetheless, when his most recent movie was released in fall 2006, it was shown in only seven cities (not including New York), a head-scratching feat for a multimillion-dollar production distributed by no less than 20th Century Fox.

The film, Idiocracy, is an outlandish affair set in 2505, a time when a sports drink, chock full as it is of electrolytes, whatever they are, has replaced water; forming coherent sentences brands one a "fag;" and Starbucks gives out handjobs. The bizarre circumstances surrounding Fox's decision to quash promotion for the movie, coupled with the film's lacerating (and endlessly quotable) rant on contemporary American mores, have earned it a place at the pantheon of cult cinema.