Our first Trump-era Idiocracy viewing

On the one hand, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews) seems like quite the exaggeration in terms of a person you would want to be in charge of anything, particularly a country. He's a professional wrestler prone to shooting a machine gun into the air to get the attention of the house of representatives.

On the other hand, wouldn't you kind of rather he was president than Donald Trump?

It kind of amazes me that we hadn't watched Idiocracy, a favorite comedy in our household, since Trump's election. Maybe for a while it would have been too painful, and we weren't ready to laugh at the decline of western civilization we thought his election represented.

But we finally corrected that last night, on Mother's Day, as it was my wife's viewing choice to accompany the taco and margarita kit we'd purchased from a local Mexican restaurant for Mother's Day. I've got a good one, don't I?

There does seem to be something about election years, however, that brings out our desire to watch this movie. Going back and looking at my viewing history of Idiocracy, I discovered the following two things:

1) Somehow this was only my fourth viewing of the movie. Even though I've been keeping a comprehensive history of my rewatches for the entire time Idiocracy has existed as a movie, I have to believe there was a fifth in there somewhere that I failed to record, given how both my wife and I can quote from the movie extensively.

2) My previous two viewings were in 2016 and 2012. In 2008, it might have been too soon because I'd only just seen it for the first time the January before, and I didn't rewatch films as regularly back then as I do now.

The 2016 viewing was in February. So it might have been a watch timed to the increasingly likely notion of Candidate Trump, though we surely would have watched it with the certainty that the eventuality of President Trump would never arrive.

Well, it arrived nine months later.

Four years and three months later, there's a good chance Trump's reign will end this November, or really, next January. But if the predictions of Idiocracy hold any weight at all, he could not only get reelected, but also amend the constitution to allow him to keep getting reelected until he dies, and maybe even after that. At which point the presidency gets handed down to whichever one of his children can chug the most beers in five minutes.

"Short and sweet," I said as the credits started to roll at the 79-minute mark, 80 if you round up. Indeed, one of the reasons the movie is so great is that it packs so much in to such a short running time. There isn't a wasted moment, though there could have been -- for the first time I watched the DVD extras, which offered up some truly deadly deleted scenes. Included among those are two scenes with Joe's girlfriend being hit on by her boss. Those characters were left on the cutting room floor entirely, thank goodness.

Other things I noticed this time:

1) Terry Crews used to be credited as Terry Alan Crews. Was that a remnant from his football days? No idea.

2) I love Andrew Wilson as Beef Supreme -- both the performance and the name. Only afterwards looking it up did I realize that he's Luke and Owen's older brother. (And not all that talented, I suppose, which is why he only gets a fraction of the work they do.)

3) Speaking of Luke Wilson, he may be one of my favorite actors who I don't actively consider to be a favorite. He's in a number of movies that I like more than most people do, such as Henry Poole is Here, Middle Men, The Family Stone and The Skeleton Twins. Add that to generally recognized classics like Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Old School and Anchorman, and you've got a really nice career there. I guess Idiocracy falls somewhere in between a "me movie" and a "generally recognized classic."

4) But as for Dax Shepard, well, this is as good as it ever got for him.

5) People ask why I have a crush on Maya Rudolph -- some of my friends do, anyway. This is Exhibit A.

I wish there were some solid details actually related to the movie that I'd never noticed before, but what can I say -- it's short and I know it well.

And I'll make it a point to watch it again before another four years go by, so I can be sure of those five viewings.

I just hope the next one will come during a Biden presidency.