Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes five centuries in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.
Officer Collins has been spearheading one of the US Army's most secretive experiments to date: the Human Hibernation Project. If successful, the project would store its subjects indefinitely until they are needed most. Their first test subject - Joe Bauers - was not chosen for his superiority. Instead, he's chosen because he's the most average guy in the armed services. But scandal erupts after the experiment takes place - the base is closed, and the president denies any knowledge of the project - Unfortunately, Joe doesn't wake up in a year, he wakes up in 500 years. But during that time human evolution has taken a dramatic downturn. After waking up, Joe takes a prison-assigned IQ test and finds that he's the smartest guy alive. Awaiting a full presidential pardon if he can solve one of the country's biggest problems - the dwindling plant population, Joe races against time to solve this problem. But he alienates half the country in the process. Can he make things right and escape a ...Written by
halo1k
The main character's name is "Joe Bauers", who is made the Secretary of the Interior, charged with trying to solve the issue of crops not growing in the future. "Bauer" is the German word for "farmer". See more »
Goofs
When Joe first gets out of his coffin after it crashes into Frito's apartment, the garbage piled on the lid stays attached when it is raised, giving away that it is glued there. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Narrator:
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 favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How ...
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Crazy Credits
A note near the end of the credits says "This film was also cut entirely on a computer". See more »
A lot of things in this futuristic satire are more theoretically funny than actually funny (though it does have some laugh-out-loud moments) but a lot of that is because it seems to have been cut by the studio to better appeal to exactly the idiots it's mocking. Many situations aren't allowed to develop, there's obvious overdubbing of expository material, and worst of all a narrator explains EVERYTHING (most of which needs no explanation), probably because some preview audience didn't understand what was going on. In other words, a movie about dumbing down has been... you guessed it.
One hopes that a longer, better version of this comedy will eventually surface on DVD, and it will become the cult fave it deserves to be, but even in this mutilated and somewhat comic- spirit-diminished form it's one of the more memorable films of the year-- a screech of disgust against our culture and all the ways it's become trashified, stupidified and uglified in the name of appealing to the yahoos. I watched it right after Land of the Dead, George Romero's latest milking of the single idea that consumers = zombies, which is basically the same point Judge is making; yet where Romero's counterculture viewpoint (now zombies = underclass that needs to revolt against the rich) seems hopelessly out of date, Judge's take is fresh, dead-on and far more disturbing. Just listen to the yahoos in your movie audience whooping it up for President Camacho's State of the Union just like their counterparts on screen, and you'll know that we're all doomed.
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A lot of things in this futuristic satire are more theoretically funny than actually funny (though it does have some laugh-out-loud moments) but a lot of that is because it seems to have been cut by the studio to better appeal to exactly the idiots it's mocking. Many situations aren't allowed to develop, there's obvious overdubbing of expository material, and worst of all a narrator explains EVERYTHING (most of which needs no explanation), probably because some preview audience didn't understand what was going on. In other words, a movie about dumbing down has been... you guessed it.
One hopes that a longer, better version of this comedy will eventually surface on DVD, and it will become the cult fave it deserves to be, but even in this mutilated and somewhat comic- spirit-diminished form it's one of the more memorable films of the year-- a screech of disgust against our culture and all the ways it's become trashified, stupidified and uglified in the name of appealing to the yahoos. I watched it right after Land of the Dead, George Romero's latest milking of the single idea that consumers = zombies, which is basically the same point Judge is making; yet where Romero's counterculture viewpoint (now zombies = underclass that needs to revolt against the rich) seems hopelessly out of date, Judge's take is fresh, dead-on and far more disturbing. Just listen to the yahoos in your movie audience whooping it up for President Camacho's State of the Union just like their counterparts on screen, and you'll know that we're all doomed.