Directed by Mike Judge. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, David Herman, Anthony "Critic"Campos, Justin Long, Terry Alan Crews

It's ironic that so many great comedies are about stupid people. Hell, the Three Stooges built an industry around the idea, and don't get me started on Elmer Fudd. In reality stupid people are not funny. When you see a dumb person in a film or TV show do something that makes you laugh, you can bet Grandma's insulin money that there was someone really smart behind the scenes. No, real life idiots aren't funny, they're just annoying, but in the hands of someone like Mike Judge, mouth-breathing morons can be hilarious. Remember a pair of jackasses named Beavis and Butthead? That was Judge. How about King of the Hill? Judge again. The characters in that show aren't as stupid as the ones in Beavis and Butthead, but there are more of them, making for more idiocy per capita. There was Office Space too, though that one didn't work for me, possibly because there were too many smart people in it.

Luke Wilson plays Joe Bauers, a likable but unambitious private in the U.S. Army. Whenever he's presented with the option to lead, follow, or get out of the way, Bauers -- not entirely grasping his choices -- chooses to get out of the way every time. The army is working on a suspended animation process that will keep their best soldiers on ice until they are needed. The powers that be don't want to risk a really valuable soldier to test the system, so Bauers is chosen as their guinea pig, as is a hooker named Rita played by Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph.

Because of military bureaucracy and the officer in charge of the project having fantasies about being a pimp (long story), Bauers and Rita are forgotten and their suspended animation chambers are lost when the army base is eventually torn down. Bauers' year on ice soon becomes five hundred years, and while he sleeps -- in a disturbingly believable scenario -- natural selection begins to favor those with low I.Q.s., insuring that the earth will be inherited by, not the meek, but the monosyllabic.

Bauers awakens to a world of stupidity. Garbage piles have reached mountain-like status, and decaying skyscrapers have been bungee-corded together to keep them from falling down. Cars drive off uncompleted bridges repeatedly, and the top-rated TV program is a show called Ow, My Balls, in which a single character is repeatedly subjected to groin injuries (in light of the success of Jackass, I guess this one isn't too far-fetched). Communication is difficult at first, with the English language having devolved into a "hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner city slang, and various grunts." Not fully understanding what has happened to him, Bauers seeks medical attention at, a hospital where his Doctor (memorably played by Justin Long, probably best known as the hip laid back Mac in the Macintosh computer ads) diagnoses him as retarded. When it's discovered that he lacks the tattooed bar-code that everyone else has, Bauers is arrested and given a Public Defender named Frito (Dax Shepard of Employee of the Month) who got his law degree at Costco.

Meanwhile, Rita awakens and is busy looking for her pimp Upgrayedd (the double "d" is for a double dose of pimping). Five hundred years in the future or not, she knows Upgrayedd will be looking for his money. Bauer breaks out of prison, locates Rita, and convinces Frito to take him to a time machine that can return him to the early twenty-first century. Along the way, though, Bauers is pressed into service as secretary of the interior under President (and pro-wrestler/porn star) Camacho. It seems that the I.Q. tests Bauers took in prison prove he's the smartest man on earth, and the Camacho administration needs him to solve the world's problems.

Wilson's laid back approach to the character is one of the big reasons the film works as well as it does. Confronted with the absurdities of this future world, It's easy to see how another actor might have dissolved into histrionics. Wilson keeps it low-key, saying more with an eye roll or raised brow than he would flailing away like Jim Carrey. His subtlety is quite effective in the face of over the top stupidity. Rudolph is likable if a bit one dimensional, and Shepard is perfectly convincing as an utter imbecile. There are also some fun cameos by Thomas Haden Church as the CEO of a sports drink company, and Office Space alumnus Stephen Root as a judge who, for no apparent reason, has Wolverine's hair and sideburns.

Idiocracy languished on a shelf for a year before its limited theatrical release, and it did not screen for the press prior to it hitting theatres, which more often than not means the studio has a stinker on its hands. Whether this indicates a lack of faith in Judge's film, or in the audience's ability to "get it" is hard to say, but this is the type of flick that will find its audience on DVD. It's a smart film about dumb people, and I highly recommend it.