Stupidity (2003)

User Rating:

5.6/10   

Director:

Albert Nerenberg

Genre:

Documentary | History

Plot:

An exploration into the nature of stupidity in Western society and its history of our perception of it.

Plot Keywords:

Stupidity | Ignorance | Knowledge | Intelligence | U.S. President

Awards:

1 win

Cast

George W. Bush	...	Himself
Noam Chomsky	...	Himself
John Cleese	...	Himself
Coolio	...	Himself
Drew Curtis	...	Himself
Salma Hayek	...	Herself
David Lawrence	...	Himself
Bill Maher	...	Himself
Michael Moore	...	Himself
Fred Napoli	...	Narrator
Albert Nerenberg	...	Himself
Geoff Pevere	...	Himself
Adam Sandler	...	Himself
Joel Schumacher	...	Himself
Paul Spence	...	Himself
Steve-O	...	Himself
Josey Vogels	...	Herself

Also Known As:

Stupidity: The Documentary (Canada: English title) (trailer title)

Runtime:

Canada:61 min

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Documentary Channel

Movie Connections:

Features "The Red Green Show" (1991)

Waste of everything involved

It's a good thing the makers of this film declared themselves "idiots" at the very beginning of the movie. It saved me from making the comment myself. It would be easy to brand this film "stupid", but I think it goes way beyond that label. It is lazy, inept and insulting. I actually hated this film enough to write this review. I didn't feel this insulted after watching "Transformers," that's how bad I'm annoyed at this movie. Can I just say how tired I am of "documentaries" using canned footage from old propaganda films from the '40s and '50s. You know the footage I'm talking about: scenes in black and white where they show you how things worked in the good old days, when things were simple, and the American dream was a smiling paradise. Women frolicked in their dresses and men wore suits and fedoras. Am I the only one tired of filmmakers splicing this stuff into their movies to show us a foil to their insipid points? To show us that our grandparent's generation was ruled in naivety and now these new filmmakers can show us the truth on how the really real world works? This stuff was okay when Mike Moore did it in "Roger & Me", but just because its public domain (meaning "free footage") shouldn't mean you're hip or ironic when you use it. The filmmakers spend a lot of time explaining the definition of several words -- like "moron" and "idiot" (they seem to take great delight in asking people on the street about these words' origins) -- but seem to have failed to figure out what the word "documentary" is. In most definitions of the word, it contains the word "factual" or "non-fiction." You're supposed to making your thesis by presenting us your audience with non-biased facts or imagery to support your claim. Thus, editing in footage of your colleagues staring moronically at a camera with bad haircuts and fake snaggleteeth to support the claim may be against the tradition. Doing it over and over and over and over again is just tiring. Doing it twelve more times after that is just trying to fill time to make it past the feature film mark. And here's the bad part. In a section where the filmmakers decide to go off on how dumbed down our media has become, instead of getting snippets of actual TV shows to support their claim, they include self-made footage parodying these shows in the lowest common denominator, using the aforementioned fake snaggleteeth. Thanks for letting us make up our own minds, guys. Thanks for speaking down to us. And while I'm talking about the media bashing part of the film, the filmmakers inform us that the world of news has just become an onslaught of 30 second sound bites with no real conversation about the subject matter that's being discussed. Can't argue with that, but guess what? This entire movie is an onslaught of 10 - 30 second sound bites from all of their experts with no real dialogue or discussion on what stupidity is or what its real effects are. I could go on for another hour counting the ways this movie sucks (footage of people tripping isn't stupidity, those are called accidents, guys; showing some guy running naked on an ice-rink is not that interesting to repeat seven times sporadically throughout 90 minutes; placing shitty lightning effects over a guy talking about special effects movies isn't funny or ironic -- its a waste of human spirit) but I think I'm about done here. Fellow filmgoers, just avoid this thing. It's not clever or funny. It's a waste of Canadian tax incentives. And Donald Sutherland (who narrated this mess). And electricity. To those who green-lit "Stupidity," try to find a subject that actually has a subject next time. Or filmmakers that actually have a clue to what they are doing.