YMMV / Idiocracy

• Accidental Aesop:
  • The film makes a case for intellectualism, but the movie also seems to make the case that street smarts and guile are just as important, and one must learn to adapt to their environment to survive.
    • Joe is described as a Ridiculously Average Guy, but he has very little drive or social astuteness, doing nothing but watching television all day, and he misses Rita's hints about what she actually does for a living. When he wakes up in 2505, he struggles to understand the changes that have taken place and because of that, he is arrested quite easily. Ultimately, he only succeeds because he eventually abandons his now-outdated mindset and adapts to the world around him; for instance, he has to pretend that he can talk to plants to convince his ignorant colleagues that water is better for agriculture and when he becomes President, he adopts Camacho's behavior because he realizes that's what the people want.
    • Rita, meanwhile, is definitely Book Dumb, but being a hooker who has gone to great lengths to avoid her pimp, she is definitely street smart: not only does she manage to make a lot of money once she gets to the future, but she manages to avoid being arrested, unlike Joe. Upggrayed was also crafty enough that he didn't end up getting arrested with Collins and was able to get himself cryogenically frozen.
  • The film also argues that if you want things to change for the better, you have to grab the bull by the horns to make them better. Joe starts the story as a lazy TV-addicted couch potato who didn't really do much with his life. It is only when he starts taking his new job as the Secretary of the Interior seriously that the world starts improving.
  • In a truly bizarre way, the film can be interpreted as pro-democratic. Even in a world of overwhelming stupidity and Anti-Intellectualism where corporate corruption is so rampant it's automated, voters manage to put the smartest, most capable people in charge and when push comes to shove they make the right choices in a crisis, providing inspiring leadership to make the world a better place and help ever-so-slightly nudge the world in the right direction.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • While Mike Judge swears up and down that this wasn't his intention, many critics and viewers have pointed out over the years that it's way too easy to interpret the opening sequence of the movie as an endorsement for eugenics, as "stupid people were having more kids than smart people" is what leads to the future being a Crapsack World. The "stupid people" being stereotypical trailer trash types and the "smarter couple" being portrayed as upper-middle class also can be interpreted as classist.
  • Soren Bowie of Cracked found his own regarding the world of 2505. The people in that world may have been dumb enough to pour salt on their crops, but they also seem pretty open-minded to the point where racism and sexism seem to be non-existent and recognized that Joe was smart enough to solve their problems and let him serve as president. President Camacho can also be considered a Reasonable Authority Figure who genuinely wants to help the people, as his first reaction to finding Joe is getting him to find a solution to the food crisis, even if said problems are actually simple to solve. So a more positive takeaway can be "Being Book Dumb isn't something to aspire to, but it's still better than the irrational, primal mob mentality and racist and misogynistic fearmongering that makes up most Real Life instances of lethal stupidity."
  • As Sarah Z points out in her own video essay on the movie, many of the problems of the world of 2505 could be blamed less on human stupidity and more on things like huge corporations like Brawndo manipulating and corrupting a complacent society through buying out entire government agencies and using their wealth and power to get their way at the expense of the public good until everything is falling apart and no one is really benefitting anymore, not even the people ostensibly in charge (who themselves have become just as incompetent as the rest of the populace).
  • The film lambastes anti-intellectualism as the biggest source of societal ills, but one may argue that pseudo-intellectualism is the bigger problem. The Brawndo Corporation literally bought both the FDA and the FCC out of a calculated obsession with maintaining their profitability, and used them to put out messages about how Brawndo was allegedly better than plain water, thereby making farmers use Brawndo for their crops and causing famines.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Ass, a film which was nothing but a close-up of someone's ass? That sounds too ridiculous to be true — oh, wait... By Andy Warhol, no less.^note It was not, however, a commercial success that won eight Oscars, including Best Screenplay.
  • One scene shows the intake clerk of the hospital using a fast-food style register with pictures of aliments and no words. Currently, there is a growing wave of people who are merely "iconerate" in that they can recognize symbols like stop signs and biohazard symbols, but can't actually read. Plus, emojis are common shortcuts for text now, in the age of social media.
  • Amusingly, Carl's Jr.'s slogan in this film isn't too far off from what they actually used at one point ("Don't bother me, I'm eating"), though obviously it's less vulgar than presented here.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: One of the menu choices at the hospital is a picture of a butt being stabbed with a knife. Apparently, this is a common problem in 2505.
• Broken Base: Is the movie just another lowbrow early 2000s comedy that isn't anything special? A cruel classist screed that completely misses the mark on the societal problems it's criticizing? Or is it a surprisingly insightful warning about the direction society could take?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: President Camacho. Manly, Large Ham, and Reasonable Authority Figure are the traits that galvanize his statement. And played by Terry Crews.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Could Joe and Rita's influence as well as them producing smart children really help the population in the long run or will they most likely be once again drowned out by the unintelligent masses?
• Genius Bonus: One of President Camacho's middle names is Herbert. Herbert Hoover was like Camacho: a genuinely nice man who wasn't up to the task of solving America's crises and who was succeeded by someone who could.
• Heartwarming Moments: While the film is mainly crass political commentary, there are a few touching moments.
  • Rita is deeply touched when Joe gets her a pardon from the government and begins to fall for him.
  • Camacho is just as much of a lout as anyone in future America, but giving Joe a chance to solve America's food shortages proves that wisdom and kindness aren't completely gone.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Supporters of Joe Biden's 2020 Presidential campaign may be quite amused by the fact that the protagonists, two people trying to right an America that's gone astray thanks to lowbrow, "trash TV" values run amok (which many of Donald Trump's critics saw him as emblematic of), are a man named Joe and a woman played by the actress who did Saturday Night Live's parody of Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate and later Vice President.
  • Rita's paintings coincidentally resemble the ones George W. Bush did after leaving office.
  • Joe escaped prison by tricking the guards that he was actually due for release. A similar thing happened in Scotland.
• Informed Wrongness: After Brawndo suffers massive layoffs, the narration explicitly describes the protesting workers as "irrational", but bear in mind that nobody, not even Brawndo's CEO, anticipated that Joe's plan to switch back to water would lead to layoffs at all. The workers aren't wrong to get angry about losing their jobs overnight.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded."
  • BRAWNDO! "It's got what plants crave!"
  • This meme is brought to you by Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr.: Fuck you, I'm eating.
  • Welcome to Costco. I love you.
  • "I like money."
  • “…and the Number One Movie in the country was called ‘Ass’, and that’s all it was, for 90 minutes.” (Used when someone thinks a number one at the box office film is stupid.)
  • Calling the movie a documentary. Which in turn spawned the counter-meme that it's not a documentary.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • A number of people take this movie at face value, pointing to the (purported) stupidity of modern pop culture as proof that this movie is a good predictor of the future. The filmmakers themselves eventually rolled with this, although it was more for socio-political reasons and insidious business practices than lethal stupidity caused by mass consumer culture.
  • A lot of people have taken the stated premise of the movie very seriously and believe that the answer to preventing a Bad Future is to pressure more well-to-do but reluctant people like Carol and Trevor to start producing more kids so that they can eventually catch up to/outnumber the "stupid" families. This has tied people's reasons to abstain from or delay having kids into a Catch-22 situation: that if they don't believe they are ready to have kids, they should have kids because they are at least smart enough to understand why they shouldn't have kids (yet). It also ignores people's personal choices and self-judgments in the matter, as the biggest factor in providing children a stable home is for parents to actually want them, not for parents to go along and have kids they don't want because that's what society expects.
    • Plus, the film’s premise goes by a misconception that "only smart parents have smart offspring." While it's true that genetics certainly do play some role in shaping one’s mental/intellectual abilities, that doesn't guarantee high IQ parents will always breed children with the same degree or quality of intelligence. Parents with "normal" IQs could very well produce a Child Prodigy, and on the flip side, "genius" parents may have "average" children. And that's not even getting to how the movie barely touches on how the quality of one's education plays a much bigger role overall.
  • A harmless example with Ow! My Balls!. Sure, it's supposed to be the ultimate example of lowbrow, nonintellectual culture and everyone who finds it even remotely funny In-Universe is a complete moron. Still, most viewers admit that it's kind of hard not to laugh a little bit.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Dr. Lexus (Justin Long)— he only appears in one scene, but Long's performance made him quite memorable. He even made the back of the DVD case.
  • Clevon Jr, whose one line pretty much sums up the entire experiment: "I’M GONNA FUCK ALL OF YOU!!!" Which he screams while surrounded by cheerleaders after winning a high school football game.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Whenever Idiocracy is talked about, it's less for its quality as a movie and more for how it comes across as endorsing eugenics (which Mike Judge himself has adamantly denied was ever the intention) and having an overly simplified/reductive and highly classist view on intelligence.
• Retroactive Recognition: At the time of the film's release, Maya Rudolph (Rita) was best known for having just come off a successful tenure on Saturday Night Live. For a younger generation of viewers, however, she'd be better known as the Judge, Aunt Cass, Connie the Hormone Monstress, or Cynthia Utrom.
• Special Effect Failure: Inevitable due to the limited budget. One scene that particularly sticks out is when they are walking through Costco, in the big room with the sofas. In part of the room toward the back, a plane has crashed through the ceiling, but it's very obviously a matte painting.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Considered to be the best film adaptation of The Marching Morons ever made. Alternatively, it's a somewhat more optimistic Fahrenheit 451 Played for Laughs.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The film was made just before smartphones and home streaming took off. It is jarring to see a 26th century where people don't watch Ass on their smartphones or in their own homes.
  • The movie's premise is "idiots making too many babies and overrunning the planet." The fear of overpopulation was still plausible in 2006 but now seems ridiculous in the 2020s, as birthrates have dropped significantly all over the world (and not just in "wealthy" and "western" nations either).
  • The movie's usage of crass humor, reality TV, red-neck culture, and hip-hop culture was more aligned with the 2000's era assumption of stupidity; which had been more scrutinized due to the invalidity of IQ Testing Methods from that era and awareness of "idiots"—namely pseudo-intellectuals, or well-read people who isn't well-informed yet try to share their questionable opinions on it—who would not fit with movie's descriptions of idiots.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: This is a crass comedy with sex jokes... that features issues like propaganda, corporate corruption, and the possible degeneration of society.

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