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Web Exclusive Review: Extract

Alternative Press - Rachel Lux on 9/2/09 @ 4:42 PM - altpress.com

COMEDY
EXTRACT (Miramax)
STARS > Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins Jr., Dustin Milligan
DIRECTOR > Mike Judge
RATING > [3/5]
OPENS > SEPT 4

A few days before we hit the preview screening for Extract, we saw Ron Livingston, the dude who plays Peter Gibbons in Office Space, at a local Los Angeles bar. The sighting served as a reminder that we'd be catching the new Mike Judge movie that weekend; that it would star Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis, and by the way, Mike Judge is awesome. The creator of King Of The Hill and Beavis And Butt-Head wrote and directed just one feature film in the decade between Office Space and Extract--the underappreciated, under-promoted Idiocracy. Released quietly in 2006 and starring Luke Wilson, Idiocracy was no run-of-the-mill laugh-a-thon; it was a prescient, sobering look at our nation's big dick/small brain culture, a dystopian vision of America in which only morons reproduce, a porn star is president, and the crops are being watered with Powerade. It was a work of unmitigated genius, but almost nobody gave a shit.

Not so with Extract, a copiously promoted and decidedly less political offering in which Judge falls all over himself to show everyone--the audience, the studio, even his producers, perhaps--that Idiocracy was just a fluke and that he was/is returning, post-haste, to prosaic workplace themes. Hence Extract's tagline: "This Labor Day, the creator of Office Space heads back to work." And so he does, with Bateman as Joel, the hapless owner of an extract plant who lets his beanbag bartender buddy (Affleck) talk him into hiring a dim-witted gigolo (Milligan) to seduce his--Joel's--usually frigid wife (Wiig). Within 24 hours, Joel also unwittingly hires a manipulative con-artist and petty thief named Cindy (Kunis) to work at the plant. Cindy proceeds to steal her co-workers' purses while seducing a man injured on the job (Collins Jr.), convincing him to forgo an insurance settlement and instead sue the shit out of Joel for his pain and suffering.

Meanwhile, rock references abound, with KISS bassist/loudmouth Gene Simmons playing an ambulance-chasing personal-injury lawyer and Philly-based extreme-metal label Relapse getting four shout-outs in the form of T-shirts (Mastodon, Exhumed, Cephalic Carnage, the County Medical Examiners) worn by the plant's resident grindcore enthusiast. We're not sure if Judge was going through a grind phase when he wrote Extract, but we give him full props for supporting worthwhile bands and even inventing his own subgenre ("melodic grindcore") via the script.

In print and online, Extract will likely be hailed as Judge's "highly anticipated return to form," but in reality, when compared to Office Space and Idiocracy, it's the least funny, least poignant and least adventurous of the three. We're still giving it a three stars, if only because number ratings are inherently relative, and Extract, despite being slightly disappointing for a Mike Judge film, is still funnier and more entertaining than much of the brainless, pandering swill that passes for comedy these days. Still, we can only hope that a man with so much talent will take more chances next time. J. Bennett

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ZaneW Posted 09.12.09 at 02:14AM
The Extract reviews not being very good might not matter that much – the film's director, Mike Judge has never had much of a great following with establishment types. His three films are more of cult classics – the Beavis and Butthead movie, Office Space, and Idiocracy all got lousy reviews upon release and didn't make huge box office earnings, but rather gained followings through rentals and word of mouth. If the Extract reviews bear on the box office earnings and grosses over all, let's hope they made it with low cost loans.



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