People of Earth

BABY GOD (C+) - Like its subject, something is decidedly off about this documentary chronicling a folksy 20th century obstetrician who secretly used his own sperm to impregnate dozens of patients, creating a legion of progeny. Director Hannah Olson seems more interested in creating a mood than in lining out a concise narrative of one man's obsession with duplicating himself.

Olson is all over the place in tracking down the spawn of Quincy Fortier, the Las Vegas doctor who died in 2006 at 94 and who spread his seed vast and wide. This creates some serious issues of heritage for the dozens (or more?) who must come to terms with how they were conceived and deceived. Principal among them is Wendi Babst, who is, conveniently, a private investigator but who struggles to convey a linear story. 

Even in the trailer, you can tell that Olson favors artfully crafted establishing shots and vintage clips. Late in the proceedings she attempts to drop another bombshell about Fortier, but it's awkwardly handled and questionably sourced. This one probably is better suited for a run-of-the-mill "20/20" TV special -- just the facts, ma'am -- than an art doc.

IDIOCRACY (C+) - They say that, as amazing as his music was, it was never as good or as dimensional as it was in Mozart's own head. The same might be said of the idea of "Idiocracy," Mike Judge's warning about America's dumb future -- the execution could not possibly match the way this sounded in his own brilliant brain. That, and a movie about idiots tends to be pretty idiotic.

Call him a prophet, but Judge ("Beavis and Butt-head," "Office Space," "Silicon Valley") was ahead of his time in predicting the coming idiocracy. He had the good taste of placing events 500 years into the future, the result of generations of nonstop reproduction by the endlessly horny lesser intellects and the dithering of egg-headed elites about wanting to wait for the just right time to finally have that one precious offspring. (The opening scenes setting up the conceit is the best part of the movie.)

Otherwise, this features Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph as average schmoes who, after a botched military experiment, wake up five centuries later to find that they are by far the smartest people alive and that American culture has deteriorated to grunts and farts. Having a pro wrestler in the White House might have been funny back in the carefree aughts, but after four years of a reality-show presidency, our tolerance for such flip gags might be too strained for this nostalgia trip. What was a diverting lark in 2006 seems better suited now as a long sketch rather than a dragged-out feature film. This one came and went quickly after it was released, and it's probably best left as a shorthand pop culture reference but left buried in its time capsule.