In the beginning of the 21st century, human evolution is at a turning point. Based on natural selection, scientists predict that the future will be full of smart people and advanced technology. However humans soon prove the theory wrong: since they’re on top of the food chain, they don’t need to continue evolving, so they get lazy and dumber every day.
The smart, rich people think a lot before having children since it’s such a big decision, but they end up waiting so much that they die without having any heirs. On the other hand, dumb poor people keep on multiplying like bunnies and make more dumb kids that in the future have even dumber babies. In 2005 in a military base in Washington DC, army librarian Joe is watching TV during his shift.
Suddenly he’s approached by his senior, who announces Joe is getting replaced because he’s been chosen for a very secret project. Joe protests because his plan has always been to retire as a librarian since it’s an easy and calm job, however the orders come from the higher-ups and he can’t refuse. Meanwhile the higher-ups are discussing the chosen people for the secret project.
Their science team has invented human hibernation pods so they can preserve their finest men and revive them in times of need. First they need to test them, so Joe was chosen because he’s the most average man in the military and has no family. They also need a woman but since the army doesn’t have any, the colonel has chosen a naughty worker named Rita, who often entertains private army parties.
The army will be paying her hustler Upgrayedd and Rita’s crime history will be cleaned. The first test will leave Joe and Rita asleep for one year and is highly classified, meaning nobody else knows about this. The next day, Joe and Rita are together in a waiting room for a medical check.
Joe chats with Rita, who pretends to be a painter when Joe asks about her life. When the scientists puts them in the hibernation pods, they’re given IVs and Rita freaks out. Joe calms her down and asks her to trust the army.
When Rita accidentally mentions Upgrayedd, she pretends that’s her boyfriend and Joe thinks it’s a Dutch name, still not seeing all the suspicious holes in her story. Then the scientists put them to sleep and close the pods, locking the lab door when they leave. Soon the colonel and Upgrayedd get arrested because of their involvement with illegal substances and dirty workers.
This scandal causes the base to be closed and the building demolished, so the pods are left forgotten under all the debris. While Joe and Rita sleep, years pass and society begins to get more and more stupid every day at a scary speed. People hope that genetic engineering will fix this, but unfortunately the brightest minds and most resources are spent on less important problems like hair loss.
Population eventually explodes and intelligence declines until humanity can’t even solve the most basic problems. Garbage is stacked for centuries and in 2505, the Great Garbage Avalanche happens. A truck is dropping more garbage on the pile and the weight finally becomes too much, so a huge landslide goes down.
The pile of garbage falls and drags Joe’s pod, dropping it through a window into Frito’s apartment. Ignoring the disaster behind him, Frito watches a very dumb comedy show on his giant TV. The pod activates and awakens Joe, who is dizzy and confused.
He keeps asking about the situation and Frito gets annoyed, so he gets off his toilet chair and throws Joe out of the window. Afterward Joe looks around for help, but people talk in English that mixes hillbilly, valley girl, and inner-city slang so he can’t communicate with the locals, who call his speech pompous. As he looks around, Joe notices how much the city has changed.
Everything is in ruins, there are ads everywhere, and brands use dumb or dirty names. Eventually he finds a hospital with a badly designed sign and goes inside, finding more signs that look like a fast food place, dirt and trash everywhere, and even slot machines. The receptionist doesn’t speak, she just has buttons to press for the right symptom.
Because Joe describes a bunch of things and doesn’t know what’s happening, the receptionist goes for the “I don’t know” button. While waiting to be called, Joe tries to drink from a water fountain but an energy drink called Brawndo comes out instead. He asks a man about it, who laughs at the idea of wanting to drink water since it belongs in the toilets.
Then Joe makes a line to enter a diagnostic machine, where they make him put plugs in his mouth, ear, and rear. However the technician mixes the plugs and Joe has to put the rear one into his mouth. The disgust has him rushing to wash his mouth with energy drink.
Next Joe goes to the doctor’s office and sees a magazine dated 2505, but he thinks it’s a misprint. The doctor says a bunch of nonsense and concludes Joe is retarded, for which he charges him five billion dollars. When Joe looks at the bill, he sees the year 2505 and finally realizes he’s in the future.
While the doctor keeps asking him about his citizen tattoo, Joe goes to the window to take a better look at the city. There’s destruction and trash everywhere, and there are barely any tall buildings left. The doctor realizes Joe is unscannable at the same time Joe realizes he’s been slept for 500 years, so they both scream.
Since the doctor activates an alarm, Joe runs away. On the streets, he notices more things like the big clock that is stuck on the same time all day and the signs with dirty pictures plus curse words. The economy is in neglect and food supplies are ravaged.
Joe goes to the cinema and learns the only available movie is a 90-minutes recording of a naked rear farting, which has won eight Oscars. Everyone around him finds it hilarious. That night, Joe watches a woman trying to get fries from a machine and failing.
After she leaves, he reaches inside the machine to try to get the fries, only to be caught red-handed by the police. They notice he’s unscannable and immediately tackle him to arrest him, ignoring him when he says he’s with the army. At that moment he notices Rita’s pod nearby, but the cops shut him up with pepper spray.
In court, Joe is kept inside a cage and people throw things at him. The walls are also covered with ads. Joe is taken to his seat for his trial and he discovers his lawyer is Frito, who instead of defending him complains about his broken window.
Both lawyers and the judge just keep spouting a bunch of nonsense, and the crowd soon is throwing insults too. Joe tries to defend himself with sensible arguments, but his voice only gets others to laugh and he’s found guilty. Meanwhile Rita’s also woken up and tries to call Upgrayedd from a public phone, which requires two thousand dollars to use.
A man tries to buy her services and she tricks him by getting paid but asking him to wait. When she looks at the bills, she’s shocked by all the dumb words and the strange face on them. In the morning, Joe is taken to a machine so he can get his citizen ID tattoo.
When the AI asks for his name, Joe tries explaining he’s not sure what’s happening, and the machine thinks “Not Sure” is his name. Joe tries correcting it but it’s too late: he gets the tattoo and the ID shows a very bad picture with the wrong name. Next Joe is taken to an amplitude test so they can choose the right jail job for him.
The test is easier than first grade and it upsets Joe to see people having trouble with simple shapes. Afterward Joe is taken to prison, where he sees too many people locked up in the same cell and guards throwing food at them as if they were pigs. Finally understanding just how dumb everyone truly is, Joe tells a guard that they made a mistake and he’s supposed to be leaving jail today, not getting in.
The guard sends him to the reception, where an officer takes off his handcuffs before checking the system. He quickly realizes he isn’t supposed to leave, so Joe asks him to check the physical files. While the cop is distracted, Joe runs out of the building.
The automatic weapons by the door try shooting him, however they’re in a bad state and destroy each other instead. By nighttime, Joe returns to Frito’s apartment and asks if time machines have been invented. Frito says they have but refuses to help him find it, however he agrees when Joe promises to go back to the past and open a savings account in Frito’s name, which would have eighty billion dollars by now.
At that moment the cops start pounding on Frito’s door, so Joe changes clothes and escapes with Frito through the window. The duo leaves in Frito’s car and finds Rita wearing new clothes at a corner where she’s still tricking the same guy for money. Joe drags her into the car by force and explains everything while they drive away, which gets Rita yelling in anger.
Unfortunately there are scanners at various spots on the streets and they detect Joe’s tattoo, so now the cops have their location. To make matters worse, the car suddenly stops because the battery runs out. The trio gets out and hides right before the cops arrive to shoot the car down.
A crowd gathers around the unnecessary explosions and even start a fight just for fun. After many hours of walking the trio makes it to Costco, which now sells every product no matter the category. It offers school courses too and Frito became a lawyer here.
There are also multiple food chains that now are dirty clubs with pun names. The place is so big that they need to take a shuttle to reach the electronics section and Rita goes to the bathroom while they wait. Frito begins making very inappropriate comments about her and when Joe tries to stop him, his tattoo is scanned again and his face appears on all the screens.
Frito gets on the shuttle to escape while the cops quickly surround Joe, arresting him and throwing more pepper spray on his eyes. Rita comes out of the bathroom and sees the cops, so she stays hidden. Moments later Joe is taken to the White House and meets the president’s team.
He’s shocked to hear that his IQ test shows he’s the smartest guy in the world, so they want him to be secretary of interior. Joe tries to explain this makes no sense but is interrupted by the arrival of President Camacho, who grabs Joe’s head thinking it should be bigger for a smart guy. Afterward Camacho calls for a special meeting and announces on national TV that his new secretary of interior Mister Not Sure will solve all their problems in a week because he’s very smart, and Joe will get a full pardon if he does.
The crowd is skeptical at first, but Camacho convinces them all with a song. Afterward they do a full parade while drinking beer and raising their middle fingers. Sometime later there’s a cabinet meeting and Joe asks Frito to join it as his lawyer.
In private, Joe asks Frito where the time machine is, but Frito isn’t good at giving directions. Joe needs a distraction and asks the cabinet to take him to see the dead crops. He also asks the guards to find Rita for him, and everyone thinks she’s his lover.
When they make it to the countryside, Joe confirms the soil is awful. After Frito secretly gives him a map to the museum with the time machine, the guards bring Rita over. Joe pretends he needs some time alone with Rita and takes her behind the bushes so they can open the map, which is not useful at all.
They have no choice but to return to the team and when they approach the sprinklers, they’re shocked to discover the crops have been watered with energy drink. It turns out that in 2330, Brawndo got rid of water because they saw it as a threat and now even the cows and babies are fed the energy drink. It takes Joe several hours to convince the team to change Brawndo for water and in the end he wins the argument by saying he can talk to plans so he knows what they want.
They spend the whole day installing new water sprinklers with the support of Camacho. When night falls, they’re given a room in the White House. Rita reveals she got a pardon thanks to Joe and offers him to share the bed for the night, but Joe refuses because he still thinks she’s a painter dating her manager Upgrayedd.
A few days later, someone throws a rock at the window and Joe sees an angry crowd outside. It turns out changing to water has dropped Brawndo’s stocks to zero and a large part of the population has lost their jobs, so now they’re protesting. An emergency cabinet meeting is held with the Brawndo CEO, who blames everything on Joe’s plan.
Soon he’s taken to trial and Fox News makes an awful coverage of it as usual. Joe is found guilty and sentenced to a night of “Rehabilitation”. At first Joe thinks that sounds fine, but “Rehabilitation” happens to be a monster truck arena where prisoners are chased and killed if they don’t run fast enough.
Rita visits Joe in prison and notices they’ve chained him to a rock so he can’t run away like last time. Joe asks her to find the time machine, return to the past, and tell everyone to stay in school. That night, even Camacho attends Rehabilitation and the crowd beats up the guy singing the national anthem.
Two huge trucks enter the arena showing dangerous weapons that look like a man’s organ, but Joe only gets a flimsy car with a flaccid silicone member. The cops put Joe’s rock on the back of the car, which breaks a good chunk of it. When he drives in, people start throwing things at him.
At the White House, Frito watches the show while Rita looks out the window. She’s shocked to see a flower growing in the garden and asks Frito to take her to the arena. On their way there, they see the crops are truly growing.
When the confrontation begins, a third truck enters the arena. It’s even bigger and brings down part of the building, so it ends up buried under the debris. One of the small trucks goes ahead and quickly rips the roof off Joe’s car before the other one hits it on the side.
At that moment Rita arrives and tries to talk to Camacho, who doesn’t believe her story. The trucks speed up and try to crash into the car at the same time, but Joe also goes faster and makes the rock fall off. The chain pulls him out while the vehicle keeps going, so the two trucks end up crashing against each other in one big explosion.
Everyone is confused because they don’t want the criminal to win, but the driver of the third truck Beef Supreme suddenly raises from the debris with a flamethrower. Getting desperate, Rita bribes Frito and a cameraman, asking them to go film the crops. Then she rushes to the control room and tricks the technician into leaving.
However when the duo arrives at the field, they get distracted by a naughty club. After accidentally burning down an employee, Beef starts shooting at Joe, destroying his rock. Now Joe can run away and hide behind the trucks.
Joe climbs on top to grab a hanging microphone and gives a moving speech about his intentions to help, but the crowd hates it. The workers move the microphone away and Joe holds onto it to stay out of the flamethrower’s reach, however they’re slowly lowering it down. When Frito and the cameraman come out of the club, they get into a fight and accidentally drop the camera, which falls right in front of a crop.
This makes Frito remember the deal and starts recording the whole field, which Rita makes appear on all the big screens. Joe falls to the ground and Beef is about to burn him, but Camacho saves him and announces Joe has earned his pardon. During the after-party, Rita tells Joe she wants to stay in the future because she’s doing better here.
Camacho announces Joe shall be his vice-president and Joe tries turning it down, saying he wants to go home. Everyone begs him to stay because they need him and Joe is so touched that he agrees to do it. Then Frito makes fun of him and shows him the time machine, which turns out to be a simple ride.
Frito lied just for the money. As time passes, Joe is a very successful vice-president and eventually becomes elected for president with Rita as his first lady. As a new era starts for the country, Rita and Joe have the three smartest kids in the world.
Vice-president Frito takes eight wives and has 32 very dumb children. Meanwhile in another pod, Upgrayedd appears in the future too.