Idiocracy
Directed by: Mike Judge
Written by: Mike Judge
Starring: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard

When news started to pop up on IMDB that Mike Judge -the genius creator of Beavis & Butthead and King Of The Hill- was working on a new movie about stupid people, it started quite a buzz. Judge hadn’t made a film since the 1999 classic Office Space, so naturally people expect great things from him.

But something mysterious happened along the way, it was finished a year ago but held back. What irony that Fox, of all studios, would be willing to release a movie that openly mocks their token brand of idiotic lowest common denominator entertainment. We all know how selective Fox is about their movies. After all, they just put out “Big Momma’s House 2″ – they have a reputation of quality to keep up! After much post-production budget slashing (Mike Judge had friend Robert Rodríguez add CGI to one scene for free), Fox came very close to dropping the whole thing. After all this they finally released it to only 7 cities with absolutely no promotion. Despite being opening night, it was shown here at only one showtime and on only one screen. There were less than 10 people in the theater.

What is this strange movie that Fox doesn’t want you to see? Is it controversial? Is it horribly bad? Idiocracy is neither of these things. The mystery continues.

But on to the plot: Joe (Luke Wilson) is a lowly army officer, average in every way. He has a menial office job which allows him to do nothing but watch TV at his desk. He signs up for a one year human hibernation experiment so he can retire early. Also put into hibernation is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a common hooker who signs up to clear her police record. Obviously things go wrong, the project is forgotten, and the two characters wake up in the year 2505.

As it is explained in the movie’s introduction – smart people are no longer having children in our modern world. The higher the I.Q., the less likely someone is to spawn. This is put into perspective with horrific accuracy through the comparison of two families, one a couple of intellectuals, the other a stereotypical trailer-dwelling bunch who keep having kids just to collect more welfare. As time passes the intellectual couple grow rich but remain childless, while the trailer people have 10-20 kids running around, some with unwanted children of their own. And so time went on in this way, with intelligence eventually being bred out of humans completely, which brings Joe and Rita to the world of 2505.

This future world is populated by redneck/ghetto-trash hybrids who are just barely literate and giggle at the very mention of toilets or the word “balls” used in any context. When Joe goes to the hospital, the teenage doctor reads the prognosis off a screen: “Well, you talk like a fag and your shit’s all fucked up.” Language has become mumbled slang and continuous swearing. Anything remotely intellectual is mocked as being “faggy”. Everyone is fat, everyone smokes, energy/sports drinks have replaced all uses of water. People are named after brands like Lexus and Tylenol. The president of the USA is a porn star wrestler, the Secretary of Energy won the position as part of an elementary school writing contest. Costco is the size of a large city (of course the script called for this to be a Wal-Mart) and Starbucks sells hand jobs. Absolutely EVERY surface is covered with a montage of corporate logos, from the wallpaper in houses to the clothes people wear. Any joke you can think of involving a corporate-sponsored nightmare world is covered. And re-covered. Again and again and again.

Joe and Rita have to put up with the dumb new world as they try to find a promised time machine to get back to 2005. Along the way Joe goes to jail and has an I.Q. test which identifies him as the smartest human on earth. Because of this he is kidnapped by the president (Terry Crews, easily the best performance of the film) and made to solve all of society’s problems or be killed.

While this may seem like a hilarious idea in description, Idiocracy a movie that contains only one joke, and the joke gets old fast. This same idea: *rampant consumerism future!* has been done much better and much more effectively in movies like Back To The Future II and all throughout Futurama. The fact is that it makes for a very funny background gag but is not strong enough alone to hold the entire plot of a film. Yes, we get it, they watch too much TV. They think getting kicked in the nuts is high comedy. The very thin plot is only being used as a vehicle to showcase the sets and costumes…which ARE funny, but not for 80 minutes. The budget was clearly huge and the art department is to be commended for their incredible attention to even the smallest detail. But great satire requires subtlety, and most of Idiocracy plays out like a dull heated rant against consumer culture. Nothing really witty at all, pure overkill.

Luke Wilson turns in another performance as the gentle everyman, while Maya Rudolph does little more than fill space. This is a big compliment coming from me- I think she’s the female equivalent of Jimmy Fallon, easily the most annoying and talentless SNL cast member of this decade. Her character is useless until the very end and spends most of the time just standing around. Terry Crews is perfection as the president, he seems to be the only one who understands that acting like a convincing idiot means much more than just saying “duuuuuuuh” a lot.

Which brings us to the real scene killer- Dax Shepard as Joe’s only acquaintance in the future world. He somehow managed to over-act in his idiot role, playing it too stupid and frankly unwatchable. While other actors were simply acting dumb he decided to play borderline autistic for some reason.

It’s not a bad movie, it certainly doesn’t deserve to be hidden and held back as it was. It’s not un-funny, some parts and small details were hilarious. But it’s not a great movie either, I would even go so far as saying that it’s deeply flawed and not at all up to Mike Judge’s normal satire standards. Sadly, the bureaucratic controversy surrounding the film is far more interesting than the film itself. – manicpanda

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Directed by: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Written by: John August, Pamela Pettler, Caroline Thompson
Starring (the voices of): Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Albert Finney, Christopher Lee

I’m having a hard time pinpointing why Corpse Bride isn’t a very good film.I heard someone else refer to it as “astoundingly unengaging”, and that’s pretty much it.Characters without character. Songs without heart. A love story with very little love. 3 characters, 2 sets, and just over an hour of a movie I’m going to forget about by tomorrow.

It’s just barely visually stunning. I told you already — there’s 2 sets: the dreary mansion and the underworld, a fascinating place which incidentally we see none of. That seems to be a reoccurring theme in this flick — show something interesting, don’t give it any detail, then take it away. Oh sure there were interesting side characters, but no attention was paid to them. Even the main villain has only 5 minutes of screen time and remains underdeveloped despite being central to the plot. He gets no song or back story, and then he’s gone. On the other hand, far too much attention is given to the bride’s annoying maggot sidekick, a slimy Peter Lorre rip off. Peter Lorre? Is this a Bugs Bunny cartoon? Is it 1955? I find myself wondering- If I don’t care about ANY of the characters, did Burton? Does he feel now that he has to toss out these shallow morbid-chic scraps to us until he can regain the credibility he had pre-Sleepy Hollow? It’s been a long hard road straight down since Mars Attacks. Well, he wrote a cool kids book anyway…

As for the story, it’s as predictable as anything. All characters moving on autopilot towards the obvious ending with no deeper motivations or developments. Stereotypes chase after other tired clichés making bad puns (eyeball falling out gag was done about 10 times) until it’s over and you’re wondering when the real movie is going to start. This could have been a short, probably should have been. It’s just missing something. The 4 musical numbers are just as forgettable.

It pains me to make this comparison, but this movie is very much like a corpse — pretty but lifeless, only a shell of what it could be. Tragic and hollow all over. Beautiful, boring, rushed and disappointing. — Manic Panda

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PS2)
Developed and Published by: Ubisoft

Before you start this game, there are a few things to get used to. The prince we knew is dead.

No longer the witty, charming and arrogant character, several years on the run from an unstoppable black demon have turned our man into a twisted rogue assassin with a heart of stone. It’s quite a shock, and also quite sad, which adds to the darkness of the game overall.It’s like watching Roger Moore as the light hearted dandy 007 turn into Logan/Wolverine from X-Men.He also seems to have picked up a passion for wearing belts.

The game plays much the same, except now (in a hilarious joke by the game developers, I have no doubt) the button that used to just put your weapon away now causes you toss it across the room, never to be recovered. Haha. Funny.In Sands it was easy to see where you had to go, your path was clearly marked. Now the jumps seem more perilous and the ledges are less obvious. The game still takes place in a single palace, but it’s non-linear, you can go anywhere at any time. There is a map. This is a good feature if you’ve missed something, but a source of frustration as well, as you may have to go in circles to achieve your goal, or navigate the same trap-filled hallway 2 or 3 times in a row.Your sand tanks (yes there is still the trademark time-control, thankgod) are severely limited to 6, you have to earn new ones instead of them just appearing.

Princey has gained some skills. Although I’m not into this aspect very much, as far as combat goes, Warrior Within definitely delivers. Fighting options are almost infinite. Do you chop the enemies head off? Cut him in half at the waist or down the middle? Or throw him off the nearest cliff? You can also throw enemies at each other. Whatever you choose, the bad guys bleed profusely, and sometimes they beg for their lives.That’s always fun. Fighting consists of one large main sword, which changes as you advance, and more than 30 smaller weapons you can pick up from enemies and switch along the way. These run from a simple dagger or axe to hidden weapons like a hockey stick or a teddy bear.Learning the fighting styles is a major frustration for me at this point. Sadly it’s also a major breakthrough in gaming technology, and a selling point of the game.Do you like learning combos? I DON’T, so imagine my glee at opening the manual and flipping through no less than *5 full pages* of combo attacks. There’s about 60 of them. The official guide book comes with a fold-out poster of them all. Prepare to study!As it stands right now I’m almost 4 hours into the game and I haven’t progressed much on learning the combos. It’s mostly a lot of straight-up button mashing. I’m not proud of this.But don’t listen to me, I’m just a girl.

The major down-sides to this game, aside from the complicated fighting style, are the soundtrack and finding the hidden artwork. Remember in Sands of Time when you’d find a near-impossible to reach hidden doorway, it would lead you down a mysterious hall into a blue area where you would get a sweet extension to your life line? Well, this time these mystery areas can lead to either a life extension…. OR unlock parts of the production art gallery. You never know.I don’t know about you, but spending 15 minutes risking my life trying to navigate a near-impossible set of traps just to unlock one lousy background sketch kinda pisses me off.And I really miss blowing off steam by hacking up Farah for no reason….that bitch.

If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’ve already heard about the soundtrack. It varies from regular “spooky Persian castle!” score to nu metal. Painful, painful nu metal. The demo video plays to a Godsmack song. Thankfully the guitar riffs only kick in during the fight scenes.

I realize this review focuses on the negative, but I don’t want to come off as hating this game. It takes some getting used to, and the learning curve for the fighting style is huge, but it’s definitely a solid game that’s fun and challenging at the same time. It took me about an hour to stop hating this game, and now i love it. From what I’ve read, this is the general consensus of fans.Warrior Within is truly a great game. The graphics are superb, fluid and life-like, and the story is interesting.And it’s not as good as Sands of Time, but how COULD it be?? — Manic Panda