Idiocracy.

"Idiocracy is easily the most potent political film of the year, and the most stirring defense of traditional values since Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France," argues Reihan Salam in Slate. "Rare is the movie that challenges your beliefs. Rarer still is the movie that tells you you're a fat moron, and that you should be ashamed of yourself. The unmarried adultescents swarming the cities, the DINKs who've priced families with children out of the better suburbs, the kids who never read - these are Hollywood's most prized demographics, and Mike Judge has them squarely in his sights. Is it any wonder 20th Century Fox decided Idiocracy would never be boffo box office?"

But people are wondering (still), and today on Weekend Edition, Elvis Mitchell was invited to explain why so few people have even heard of the film, much less seen it. He calls it "hilariously, horrifically ugly" and cracks up thinking about it right then and there on NPR.

Related: Drew and, via David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back, Joel Stein's story in Time on why Fox dumped the movie. Reviews: IMDb.

Update: Lots of email on this one. Clearly, Dennis Cozzalio argues for many when he wrote not all that long ago, "it deserves an audience. It's a simple as that."

Posted by dwhudson at September 30, 2006 10:50 AM