IDIOCRACY (2006) - reviewed by Melissa Owsley

Idiocracy is a frightening movie because, well, it could have been much better - and it had a ring of truth. It was done by the same guy who did Office Space, the classic movie representation of cubicle life.

In Idiocracy you have an average guy waking up after a few hundred years in which evolution has become devolution - at least in terms of smarts. This movie could have been so much more than it was. While mildly entertaining in an adolescent sort of way, it could have been much smarter and less vulgar while still conveying the downfall of civilization if we allow what has been happening to continue to happen.

What is happening? Advertising and corporatization of everything in our lives leading to people never ever using their brains. The fact that no one even seems to know what a cow looks like unless they visit a museum or zoo. (Ok, I exaggerate, but not by much.) And the constant rewarding of moronic behavior.

I mean, really, H.L. Mencken was right about the public finally getting the leaders that were just like them - times 10 in this movie. The stupid keep reproducing, and due to societal factors, the smart do not. Maybe there is something wrong here?

I know that what could really be happening is stratification of society, but Idiocracy proposes that the average guy becomes the genius due to our continuous rewarding of the less than brilliant. If you bother to see this movie, I'd be interested in what you think.

Melissa Owsley is a frequent flier for MF and is webmistress over at pinatariders.org

Review: PROTOTYPE (1983) - by Alex Hymark

Starring: Christopher Plummer - David Morse - Frances Sternhagen - James Sutorius - Stephen Elliot - Arthur Hill
Director: David Greene
Run time: 92 mins
Genres: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Released: January 2005 (DVD)
Review by A Hymark (Manchester MI)from IMDB.com with permission

Forget the campy alien-on-earth cliche treatments. PROTOTYPE delivers the smartest dialogue yet to be seen in SF film, in a contemporary of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN.
In a performance that brings smart dialogue and simple but telling cinematography to a deserving SF-savvy audience, Richard Levinson and William Link mark a cerebral triumph in this 1983 TV film starring Christopher Plummer, David Morse and Frances Sternhagen - now in recent DVD release. With such a well thought-out script, one is left to guess that the film was derived from the theatrical likes of Peter Schaffer or Arthur Miller, but with a tight and wholly spec-fic basis from classic SF matriarch Mary Shelley. In this unabashed homage to that story which began a genre, artifical life is brought to casual life as we know it - a curiosity, a property, a fellow living thing, and finally an entity in search of its purpose, place and destiny.

'Michael', the culmination of years of research by a Pentagon-sponsored program to develop a mechanical man, is introduced to us just as creator and mentor Forrester introduces it to an unsuspecting Mrs. Forrester, in an impromptu Turing test weeks ahead of schedule. Afterwards, convinced that the successes in the creature's first experience outside the controlled environment of the lab are a milestone in their careers, Forrester's research team discovers that instead of celebrating, they should now fear the control which the government has been preparing to exert all along. Forthwith, Forrester and his mechanical man go AWOL from the doctor's work, his team, and his own personal life - to see his creation through to its own self-determination.

There is no high speed chase scene. There are no gun battles, and no hunchbacked, ghastly half-made man shambling amok about the countryside terrorizing innocents. Only this bright and responsive albeit naive young man who never blinks, drinks, or realizes when he tells a stupefyingly appropriate joke. With this unseemly Pinnochio goes the doctor, a man who finds himself questioning his own intents and purpose as he tries to defend his life's work from those who would 'alter' it - perhaps to turn Michael to military ends, or to tap the knowledge of an artificial mind for more … human … purposes. The villain is only the looming threat of misuse of a great thing.

The film makes you think. Hard, too, because its social commentary and hypothesis is presented in a most stripped-down and unpretentious format, unencumbered by anything by which it could become dated or trivialized - no high budget special effects or quasi-horrific makeup cloud this film and no glib, idiotic dialogue or cornball voiceover pollutes it. In short, PROTOTYPE is a mind-grower not a mind-blower. Think of PHENOMENON without nonsense, or STARMAN without the glam of superhuman ability. DARYL without any kid stuff.

For all it's worth, 'Michael' is human enough that you want to cry at the mistreatment doled out to him for his innocence, but at the same time you are morally lost with Forrester, who is doggedly naive in attempting to save him.

In the end the only thing that gives hope is the basis for the title: PROTOTYPE is only the first, and of course there can be more.

If the shuttle's Canadian-made robot arm had a thumb, it would be up.

Alex reviews for IMDB.com - and us - from Manchester Michigan