Idiocracy - Plot

Plot

During the prologue, a narrator (Earl Mann) explains the story's premise: that in modern society, natural selection is indifferent toward intelligence, with the result that in the future, stupid people (who reproduce more often) will greatly outnumber the intelligent.

As the story begins, Corporal Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), a U.S. Army librarian, and a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph) are selected for a suspended animation experiment which is only supposed to last a year, but the experiment is forgotten when the officer in charge is imprisoned for having started a prostitution business of his own.

Five hundred years later, when the average I.Q. has dropped to somewhere in the lower twenties, Joe and Rita's suspension chambers are unearthed by the collapse of an immense pile of garbage. Joe's suspension chamber smashes through the wall of the apartment of Frito Pendejo (Dax Shepard), who immediately throws him out for interrupting his favorite TV show, "Ow! My Balls!".

Joe, suffering from a suspended animation hangover, makes his way to a hospital, where he discovers the year is 2505. He is arrested for not paying his hospital bill, and for not having a bar code tattoo. Frito, still mad about his broken apartment, turns out to be his trial lawyer, and his inept representation makes sure that Joe is sent to jail. Meanwhile, Rita returns to her former profession.

While imprisoned, Joe is renamed "Not Sure" by a faulty identity tattooing machine, and takes an I.Q. test, before easily outsmarting the prison guards and escaping. Joe returns to Frito's apartment to ask Frito whether a time machine exists to help him return to 2005. Frito claims to know of one, but agrees to help only after Joe promises to open a bank account under Frito's name in Joe's time, which will be worth billions of dollars by 2505. On the way to find the time machine, Joe and Frito find Rita.

They arrive at a gigantic Costco store, where Frito thinks the time machine can be found. A scanner in the store identifies Joe as a fugitive by his tattoo. He is arrested again and taken to the White House to become Secretary of the Interior, on grounds that his I.Q. test identified him as the smartest man alive. In a speech, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews) gives Joe the job of fixing the nation's food shortages, dust bowls, and crippled economy within a week.

Joe discovers that the nation's crops are irrigated with a Gatorade-like sports drink named "Brawndo", whose eponymous parent corporation had earlier purchased the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Federal Communications Commission. When Joe has it replaced with water, without visibly improving the crops, Brawndo's stock drops to zero and computers automatically lay off half the population, causing mass riots.

Joe is sentenced to die in an unfairly-matched monster truck demolition derby featuring undefeated "Rehabilitation Officer" Beef Supreme (Andrew Wilson). Rita discovers that Joe's reintroduction of water to the soil has finally prompted vegetation in the fields, Frito shows the thriving crops on the stadium's display screen, and the President gives Joe a full pardon.

The President names Joe Vice President. Joe and Rita find that the "time machine" is a wildly inaccurate history-themed amusement ride. Joe is subsequently elected to the presidency. Joe and Rita marry and conceive the world's three smartest children, while Frito, now Joe's Vice President, takes eight wives and fathers thirty-two of the world's stupidest children.

After the credits, a third suspension vessel releases Rita's former pimp, Upgrayedd, where he seemingly starts to search the future city for Rita.