As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favoured the noblest traits of man, now began to favour different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilised and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction - a dumbing-down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

That's the amazing theme of the movie! The intelligent have been outbred by the stupid and America has been dumbed-down into Uh-merica. And if you don't think that isn't one of the most blatantly politically-explosive concepts to fire a film in years, then you're not keeping a close eye on the popular culture!

Written and directed by Mike Judge, the comic-genius behind the Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill cartoon series, it stars Luke Wilson as Joe Bauers -- the most statistically average man in the US Army -- and Maya Rudolph as Rita, a prostitute.

In 2005, they find themselves in a secret Army experiment, frozen in "Hibernation Pods", which are forgotten about and chucked in a garbage heap. "As the years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate…The population exploded and intelligence continued to decline until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems."

Five hundred years later, the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 propels Joe's pod through the window of a "lawyer", Frito, who happens to be watching "Ow, my Balls" on the "Violence Network".

Joe and Rita now find themselves the most intelligent people around. In Uh-merica of 2505, everybody drinks "Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator". Nobody drinks water -- which had become a threat to corporate profits. "Water? You mean like in the toilet?"

The anti-corporate theme is scathing -- perhaps another reason why the film was suppressed. It pulls no punches against Starbucks, which has now morphed into a brothel, which also serves coffee. Food is only available from vending machines run by Carl's Jr., an actual American fast food chain, and each Costco, the massive American store, is now bigger than the city itself.

Everybody, except Joe and Rita, has a barcode tattooed on their wrists and those who don't are the "unscannables", who are committing an offence.

The film also digs at the politically-correct use of language. Prisoners are no longer called prisoners but "Particular Individuals". Joe is unscannable and ends up in a "House of Particular Individuals" -- the new name for a prison.

President Comacho (left) -- "5 time Ultimate Smackdown champion and porn superstar" - soon finds that Joe has "a higher IQ than any man alive" and promotes him to the Cabinet so he can fix "all that starving bullshit".

This is a high-quality, intelligently-observed, brilliantly-acted, film. Luke Wilson as Joe, Dax Shepherd as Frito and Terry Alan Crews as the President are particularly outstanding. You can also tell the people who made this film, especially the scores of extras, had great fun doing it! It's got a good feel about it.

Idiocracy was released only in six US cities and only 125 cinemas, instead of the usual US-wide release of 2500-3000 cinemas. It was not released in UK cinemas at all!

20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, did nothing to promote it. There were no trailers -- the DVD is released without the usual "Theatrical Trailer" -- and no television ads, or press kits for media outlets, and no critic screenings were provided.

It is impossible not to conclude that Fox actively suppressed this film, while doing the bare minimum to fulfil its contractual obligation. It is impossible to consider that the suppression of this film is because of its controversial messages -- both its vision of a dysgenic future, and its surprisingly strong anti-corporate message.

The film would have made tens of millions had it had a full cinema release. As a critic wrote in The Guardian when it played in a limited way in the USA at the end of last year, "I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show -- packed-out. There's an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it's out there." (John Patterson, "Stupid Fox", The Guardian, 8-9-06)

In the UK, it was released straight to DVD in May 2007 and you can only hear about it in small circulation publications like Sovereignty.

We should think about this when we consider some of the cultural pollution which is vomited into our society on the back of multi-million pound advertising campaigns. For example, Hollywood and the people who own the film, DVD and magazine distribution networks -- the cinemas and shops -- think nothing about marketing highly dangerous horror films, for mainstream consumption on our High Streets, but appear to be suppressing thought-provoking and life-affirming works like this because they don't like the themes. That's their right as owners of the network, but we need to be conscious of this -- and them!

In addition to the politically incorrect theme, and the anti-corporate message, it may also be that some of the owners of this network don't want to allow Mike Judge to make too much money via their outlets, in case he gets too powerful for them. From their perspective, one popular and fabulously wealthy, politically-incorrect, independent film-maker, a la Mel Gibson, running about freely with hundreds of millions of dollars, is one too many for them.

As always, you get more of what you pay for. If you want to help Mike Judge produce more of this sort of stuff, the best way is to buy this DVD and any other of his works. This DVD release had, by March 07, earned $9million, over 20 times its limited theatrical release.

Right: As Secretary of the Interior, with the Cabinet in the background, Joe finds that the problem with the dead crops, "sucks pretty bad."

Advisory: Rated 15. This style of rude comedy will not be for everybody. There is regular use of the F-word and quite a bit of pretty crude sex-related humour, albeit set within the context of a comically dysgenic, sex and violence obsessed "society". There is no nudity or serious violence.