Idiocracy

Tagline: "The future is a no brainer."

In Mike Judge's 2006 comedy, the perfectly average Joe (Luke WIlson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph) take part in an military experiment with suspended animation. When they wake up five hundred years later, they find that evolution has actually led to humanity losing intelligence. While trying to get to a time machine so he can get back to his proper era, Joe gets into some trouble with the law. Through an IQ test (which, for some reason, is part of his arrest process), it is discovered that he is the smartest man on earth, and so he is recruited to solve America's problems. Joe proves adept at handling these issues - such as using water to help plants grow - and ultimately decides to stay in the future with Rita.

This movie was generally panned by the critics, especially after Fox put it on an extremely limited release and refused to give advanced screenings. And it's easy to see why. The movie lacks cohesion. It feels like a lot of semi-great ideas duck taped together with a limited budget. At times, the comedy is slapstick. At other times, it is almost absurdist (think Terry Gilliam). But most of the time it seems like the set was slapped together moments before filming, while the script was being edited and adjusted mid-scene.

Which is unfortunate, because this movie has a lot of great moments which are lost in the film's self-destruction. Justin Long's great appearance as a doctor is absolutely hilarious, but that scene is passed over so quickly that we barely get to enjoy it. Many of the best jokes are there and gone - Joe's cunning escape from prison - while some of the weaker material ends up being used repeatedly - such as how Starbucks's marketing caters to a more carnal menu in the future (and that's as far as I'll go here about that).

After finishing this movie, trying to find the silver lining, my wife said, "It was good for a laugh." But that's about it. A laugh. Or two. Maybe four or five, after drinking for a bit. But there just was not enough to make up for the film's inconsistency.

Everyman

I picked up Philip Roth's 2006 novel "Everyman" at the Newport Beach Friends of the Library bookstore a while back for a mere single dollar. After reading this book, I wish I still had my dollar.

A little background: When I was an undergraduate, the name Philip Roth was tossed around a lot as one of the great contemporary American writers. I picked up and read his book "American Pastoral" and was completely underwhelmed. I didn't get it. I didn't see what the big deal was. I flipped through it again, thought about it, and still couldn't figure out why people were so enamored with that book. At that point, I just let it go and postulated that I would try it again later.

So I went into "Everyman" with a lot of trepidation tempered with a lot of hope. Trepidation because my mind still ached with the disappointment of my first attempt. Hope that maybe this book would hook me more than the first and that it would finally all come together for me. Unfortunately, it was about halfway through the book that the hope died.

Briefly, "Everyman" begins with the funeral of the unnamed protagonist, attended by a scant few people who came to pay respects to a man to whom they connected but not necessarily attached (such as his two sons from his first marriage). The book then backtracks and jumps around to various episodes throughout his life which provide insight into his broken relationships with the people at the funeral.

I guess my biggest problem was that I felt no sense of attachment, or pity, or sympathy, or anything for the protagonist. He was a philanderer, a misanthrope, a malcontent, and, ultimately, a cranky, whiny, sick old man. I understand the idea that as the "everyman" he is an imperfect being, acting on his impulses, but I still could not dig out any flake of interest in his life. It's not that I was taking some sort of moral stance against this character (consider my half-decade interest in the semi-perverse Leopold Bloom of "Ulysses"), but I never felt like accepted any control over his life. Many of his internal monologues blame others or ask others to consider his perspective, but he never tries to consider anyone else's feelings.

From a literary analysis perspective, the book was weak. The "begin at the end" structure of the novel is unimpressive. The various chunked episodes are too choppy and disconnected (although, consider life - isn't that how it is?). The protagonist is static and flat, and the minor characters are somehow flatter than flat. Nothing clicked together or jumped out as being of any literary importance. Instead, it seemed more like a formulaic novel written by an aspiring creative writing student than a potential masterpiece by an iconic writer.

I guess I just felt that the book was merely a book, and not some sort of intellectual or moral challenge - and not that I require that of all my books, but I do of books that come wrapped in such mystique and renown. But, if the book merely exists as a forum for fiction, I'd rather spend my time reading some genre works.

Sorry, Philip Roth. Maybe I'll try "Portnoy's Complaint" or "The Human Stain" in a few years. But I'm not sure I'm ready to go out with you again yet. Perhaps we should see other people.

The Road

A few days ago I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Road"(first published in 2006), but it has taken me a few days to really absorb it.

You'd think that with a cover like this, I would have at least a hint of the unnerving bleakness that was the theme of the book. But you'd be wrong.

The novel is set in a post-unnamed-cataclysm world, in which some catastrophe has led to the atmosphere being encased in a smoky cloud cover, effectively killing all the world's plant life (and, thereby, all the world's animal life). The few remaining humans are left to scrounge the earth for the remaining cans of food and other resources, such as fuel for fires (because, apparently, without the sun, it gets pretty cold during winter).

Through this dark world (pun intended), the reader follows a peripatetic man and his son, as they relentlessly follow a tattered map to the coast, where the man has hung his last best hope of finding any sort of civilization (although it is clear to the readers that this hope is completely unfounded in this fictional reality).

A story about a relatively silent man and boy walking around in a world without sunlight would be pretty boring. To add intrigue, then, McCarthy has them encounter various other survivors and horrific situations including a bit of cannibalism (because humans are the last source of meat on earth). This book is not for the faint of heart. McCarthy's prose is as stark and as brutal as the story described, but also hauntingly beautiful - as if the descriptions and metaphors used would be the type of literature a survivor would write.

The book itself is chilling in the way it portrays many of the darker sides of the way we live today, as well as presenting terrible choices that nobody hopes to ever make. In a dying world, would you be the type of person to keep surviving through the killing of others, or to kill yourself (which is what the man tells the boy to do if he were ever to be confronted by the cannibals), or to just keep moving on and clinging to baseless hopes? Would you rather wander the earth silently on your own to eventually die by yourself, or would you take a companion or join a group and risk their betrayal the next time the food runs short? After reading a scene in which the boy drinks what is perhaps the last soda in their molding world, I slowed down to savor my next Dr. Pepper and appreciated something I so often take for granted.

I am still puzzled by the novel's final passage, regarding the trout that once swam in the world's streams. The book ends with the line "In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed with mystery." It is the only point in the book which does not focus on the man or the boy (or, does it?), and I am not quite sure how I am supposed to feel about it. (Based on the rest of the novel, though, I doubt it's meant to make the reader feel bright and bubbly.)

I will not soon forget this book, its words, and the characters and world and images it presents. One passage in particular strikes me as one morbidly worth sharing and contemplating (although I don't know why):

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it. (p 130)

Harsh sentiment, good writing.