Mike Judge
49 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Judge is indifferent to anything resembling space or rhythm, yet the low-tech chintz of his approach ultimately enhances the caustic themes by making the futuristic atmosphere absurdly transparent; as with Godard's Alphaville, we are already living in the future, for how wide a gap really separates Date Movie and Failure to Launch from Ass, the single, unchanging shot of a gassy, naked butt topping box-office charts in 2025?
If you didn't know any better, you'd think there was some relation to totalitarian science fiction satires like "Idiocracy."
…a touch of the satirical cynicism of Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy…
Here’s the studio audience howling at everything he says like a horde out of “Idiocracy.”
Remember "Office Space," with Jennifer Aniston as a flair-wearing Chotchkie's waitress?
Give the makers of "Office Space" the bad news -- the residual checks may be getting smaller because "Waiting" is probably going to play on an endless loop at Comedy Central for the rest of our lives.
While the foibles of twentysomthings living off sarcasm and minimum wage isn't exactly fresh ground to work with, "Waiting" also takes aim at those omnipresent TGI Fridays-type of restaurants, and, "Office Space" notwithstanding, it still feels like a fresh target.
There's real potential in the premise of young, unmotivated screw-ups logging time at a dead-end restaurant joba hash-slinging Office Space, basicallybut first-time writer-director Rob McKittrick makes it look like a homemade sitcom laced with profanity.
But McKittrick's script, which never met a penis joke it didn't like, refuses to raise itself to the clever, subversive level that made the similarly-themed "Office Space" such a cult success.
Ryan Reynolds (the poor man's Seann William Scott) is our cheeseball host on a tour of Shenaniganz, a chain restaurant not unlike the one that was skewered more effectively in "Office Space."
He is as much "one of the crowd" as was James Murray in King Vidor's silent classic "The Crowd" more than 70 years ago.
Later, the terrific Michael Stuhlbarg plays way, WAY against type as a “Deliverance” style backwoods Eater, the kind of role often played by Stephen Root (if we’re going to keep those “Office Space” references coming).
I swear to god that Affleck is doing a very deliberate vocal impression of Milton Waddams, the Swingline stapler king from Office Space.
He sounds vaguely like Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” by way of Milton the stapler guy from “Office Space.”
Inspired by Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” it stars Luke Wilson (a much more tolerable actor than his more famous brother Owen) as Private Joe Bauers, who is a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program.
Midway through, though, Judge declines to make Office Space a slacker version of Being There, instead opting for a half-assed revenge of the nerds as Peter and fellow drones Michael Bolton (David Herman; and yes, the obvious jokes on the name are made) and Samir (Ajay Naidu; and no, the obvious ethnic jokes are seldom indulged) plot a computer rip-off.
At times throughout The Wolverine , the latest Marvel movie-franchise installment featuring Hugh Jackman as an unkillable, possibly immortal mutant, the repeated mob-on-hero battles bring to mind Luke Wilson’s plaintive speech in Idiocracy about the good old days when movies told actual stories, “so you cared whose ass it was, and why it was farting.”
Shepard, a graduate of The Groundlings improve troupe, Mike Judge's Idiocracy, and MTV's Punk'd, has a comic's timing that combines well with his Bruce Dern-style physicality.
He apparently never got Coco Chanel’s memo to remove one piece before going out, and this movie, his first foray into action after building a career in horror, has something of the garish feel of Jennifer Aniston’s work outfit in Office Space.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2026)
Directed by Matt Johnson
influenced by Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)
Themes
It's like if someone spliced Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and doused it in maple syrup.
With subtle visual nods to “Office Space” (1999)…
It’s the backbone of Gen X classics, from the violent Fight Club (1999) to the much more comedic Office Space (1999).
…the agonizing mundanity of Office Space…
Think of it as the mirror image of classic satires like The Office or Office Space, which present the American white-collar workplace as a banal exercise in oppressive mundanity.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by Idiocracy (2006)
Themes
It almost feels like Idiocracy for the TikTok generation. One thing Idiocracy failed to predict was how glued to our phones we’d all be, so it’s satisfying to see a film satirize humanity’s stupidity while directly addressing our dependence on screens. Much like Idiocracy, the satire is far from subtle, and viewers may find it too aggressively on-the-nose.
Even the best satires of the 21st century — “Idiocracy,” “Team America: World Police,” “Sorry to Bother You,” “Eddington” — initially stumbled at the box office.
It's like if Mike Judge's Idiocracy were good and not up its own ass.
A cynic would say that Idiocracy predicted the box-of-rocks simplicity of future moviegoers…