Film Reviews

IDIOCRACY The strange irony of Fox off-loading the new (yet long-completed) Mike Judge comedy without screenings, trailers, posters or marketing is that, in the IQ-obliterated future Judge’s movie envisions, the biggest evil in the collective sanding of our brains is arguably advertising. Luke Wilson plays a present-day average Joe experimentally frozen by the Army and forgotten about until he’s accidentally awakened in 2505, where he discovers a slovenly, sophomoric, masturbatory, junk-food-engorged world of mental midgets, who first imprison him, then make him secretary of the interior once they realize he’s probably the smartest man in the world. It’s an eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too concept — stupid humor as dystopian satire. Idiocracy squeezes out just enough embarrassed heh-hehs and what-if loopiness to justify outraged film-geek conversations of the “They’ll release [insert despised studio film here] and dump this?” variety — my own favorite gag being an Orwellian Carl’s Jr. that punishes infrequent patrons by taking custody of their children — but it’s a low-boil affair from the Office Space auteur that wears out its dumb-and-dumbest playbook early on. When we see CGI cityscapes of neglected, barren skyscrapers and monuments tilting, it’s somehow appropriate: The movie just feels off. If you crave a lively and funny trek through the farcical possibilities of unchecked dimwit power, Judge is still your guy. Just go rent Beavis and Butt-head Do America instead. (Citywide) (Robert Abele)

IRAQ FOR SALE: THE WAR PROFITEERS Likely the first film in history with more than 3,000 credited producers, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers was financed largely by fans of director Robert Greenwald, the trash-TV maven turned liberal muckraker responsible for the successful, colon-happy agit-docs Uncovered: The War on Iraq and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. Greenwald puts his mouth where their money is, and a lot of what he says sticks. While it doesn’t deviate from the snippy, newsmagazine format of its predecessors, Iraq for Sale stays mostly on point and on target, as Greenwald trains his sights on the ruinous consequences of corporate involvement in the Iraq war. His inventory of unsavory activities won’t necessarily surprise news-savvy viewers, but should prove plenty that’s incendiary for the uninitiated. Greenwald’s technique: Locate an unquestionably distressing issue — for example, the shameless, back-scratching relationship between the U.S. government and privatized money-mongers like Halliburton and Blackwater — and give it an anguished human face. The film is assembled out of ax-grinding interviews (the mother of a Navy SEAL–turned–Blackwater contractor killed in Fallujah; the wife of a Halliburton KBR truck driver ambushed in the line of nonmilitary duties), and pointed, sympathetic testimony from attorneys, whistleblowers, watchdogs and journalists. (No devil’s advocates here.) The antagonistic tone (shades of Michael Moore) won’t win many converts from the other side, but Greenwald’s sense of indignation carries the day: He preaches to the choir — and apparently passes the collection plate — with evangelical furor. (Music Hall) (Adam Nayman)LAGE RAHO MUNNA BHAI (KEEP ON GOING...) This odd-duck sequel to one of Bollywood’s smartest recent crowd pleasers edges perilously close to repudiating the beloved original, Rajkumar Hirani’s Munna Bhai MBBS (2003), in which a lovable hulk of a soulful Mumbai gangster (Sanjay Dutt) bullied his way into medical school to win the respect of his estranged parents. With a script as clear and simple as a fable, and frequent injections of street-thug sarcasm to cut the sentimentality, Munna Bhai was an almost perfectly calibrated mainstream entertainment. (Mira Nair’s looming U.S. remake, Gangster M.D., has been offered to Chris Tucker.) Writer-director Hirani’s new Lage Raho Munna Bhai (Keep On Going...) squanders most of the goodwill generated by Part 1, banishing nearly all of its supporting characters to the Shadow Zone and starting all over again from scratch, with Dutt’s engaging sad-sack goonda re-imagined as a lonely-guy mobster with a moony crush on a popular radio personality. Munna spends so many sleepless nights studying Gandhi to impress his ladylove that he imagines the ghost of the Mahatma tagging along behind him offering advice, like the spirit of Bogart in Play It Again, Sam. The obstacle that Munna is determined to overcome with his newfound nonviolence is a greedy developer (Boman Irani as a stereotyped Sikh vulgarian) who has evicted the residents of a retirement home. The only real suspense factor is how often Hirani will cut to a close-up of expert comic scene-stealer Arshad Warsi, who gets all the biggest laughs as Munna’s right-hand stooge. (Fallbrook 7; Naz 8) (David Chute)

NEO NED There’s a scene halfway through director Van Fischer’s cockeyed second feature where a neo-Nazi skinhead and an African-American woman run laughing through a park holding hands, accompanied by chimey, upbeat music. Such are the ironic, often comedic upendings that Fischer and screenwriter Tim Boughn unload on audiences in this “us against the world” love story between racist young thug Ned (Jeremy Renner) and suicidal single mother Rachael (Gabrielle Union), who meet cute in a psychiatric ward. Oh, and did we mention that Rachael thinks she’s Adolf Hitler? The film revels in absurdist Harold and Maude–esque shtickery: When Ned draws Rachael a romantic picture, it is of crayon swastikas and cute bumblebees wielding machine guns. When they go for ice cream, Ned orders a Chocolate Swirl. Ned lectures Rachael on “mixing the races” in the moments before their first kiss. Ned wears his Nazi T-shirt backward during a job interview with an oblivious employer. The problem lies in the film’s inability to decide whether such loaded images are funny in a Farrelly Brothers/Dave Chapelle kind of way or if they mean something deeper. The terrific lead performances only heighten this confusion. Renner invests Ned with a weirdly supercharged sense of all-American can-do spirit, while a decidedly de-glammed Union burns with a fierce intelligence and brooding wit that suggest that her and Ned’s redemption is but a brief, delusional flash. (Fairfax) (Matthew Duersten)