Extract

In the Shadows of Apatow

As prolific as writer/director Mike Judge has been throughout a stellar
career which includes such television staples as "Beevis and Butt-Head'
and "King of the Hill," it's to his detriment (and ours) that he hasn't
done more feature films. "Office Space" (1999) became a cult classic
after the fact of its failed theatrical release. "Idiocracy" (2006) did
the same in spite of its mistreatment by distributors. With "Extract"
Judge crafts a solid comic narrative base for a flavoring-extract
company run by sexually frustrated owner Joel Reynold (well played by
Jason Bateman). Reynold's staff of barely competent blue-collar workers
set off a chain reaction accident that climaxes with a severed testicle
for would-be floor-manager Step (Clifton Collins Jr.). Step falls prey
to the con-artist attentions of Cindy (Mila Kunis), a sex-kitten
opportunist determined to help Step sue the Reynold Extract company
right out of business. Joel adds to his headaches when, in a
drugged-out state, he takes his barkeep pal Dean's (Ben Affleck) bad
advice to hire a gigolo to sleep with his sexually closed-off wife
Suzie (Kristen Wiig), so that he [Joel] can then cheat on Suzie with
impunity. The tone of the comedy is spot-on but Judge never manages to
bring the humor to a boil. There are chuckles to be had and even a few
belly laughs but "Extract" can't help but pale to Judd Apatow's work
that has set the bar high for this kind of comedy. Nonetheless, you get
the sense that if Mike Judge made more pictures, he'd hit his stride
alongside the likes of Apatow pretty quick.

As
with most directorial choices, it's casting that makes or breaks a
production. Jason Bateman is Mike Judge's coup de grace that smoothes
over every narrative flaw with so much character putty that you hardly
notice the film's wavering tone of workplace humor being co-opted by
marital dysfunction. Batemen, whose acting career began in the early
'80s on television's "Little House on the Prairie," has such a deft
comic touch that his mere presence in a scene guarantees a lively
degree of humor.

Where
"Extract" misses is in the nature of workplace relations that Judge
surgically exacted in "Office Space." J.K. Simmons plays Brian,
Reynold's office manager who can't be bothered to remember his
employees names. Brian's deep-seeded contempt the company's
aggressively lazy workers is mitigated by the promise of a sell off,
but it's a character that begs for a confrontation that never comes.
The promising sell-out deal is delayed by Step's accident, that
threatens to leave no company for Joel Reynold to sell, much less at a
huge profit. Judge makes a concession to the factory placed comedy in a
rip-roaring scene with Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) playing Step's
ambulance-chasing attorney Joe Adler who proposes a medieval solution
to resolving the case inside the factory's glass-walled conference
room. Adler's demonstrative physicality makes the employees mistake him
for a barnstorming corporate raider threatening their livelihoods, and
they take tentative group action toward striking. The scene falls flat,
and feels a little too much like it was lifted from this year's other
blue-collar based comedy "New In Town."

By
focusing on Joel's flailing marriage, Mike Judge errs on the side of
romantic comedy, when he needed to pay more attention to the film's
ostensible premise about the kind of factory that Patti Smith sang
about in her devastating protopunk song "Piss Factory." "Extract" is
missing that punk edge that, however disguised, Mike Judge is known
for. He just needs make more movies to find it.