Review

Review Date: 6-September-09
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Extract (2009)

When The Simpsons Movie came out I questioned whether comedy designed for 23-minute TV spots should rightly be applied to 100-minute feature films. I pose this question again with Mike Judge's brand of comedy, and again I answer No. The mind behind Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill can be quite funny with characters who breed familiarity season after season and whose episodic stories can zip from beginning to middle to end in tasty little bonbons of humor. But Judge's method of poking at your neighbors or somebody's neighbors is too small for the big screen. He does not know what to do with so much time.

This is apparent in the lamer portions of Extract such as when the protagonist (Jason Bateman) takes drugs at the insistence of others — twice. With all due respect to the guy in my row who nearly snorted himself to death during these moments, having an upright or uptight person get stoned is just below bad-mouthed grannies and flatulent dogs on the list of desperate attempts to be amusing. At least the first time has some relevance to the plot, in which Bateman, the owner of a factory that makes flavored baking extracts, struggles with sexual estrangement from his wife (Kristen Wiig) and an attraction to a temp he has hired (Mila Kunis). If his dopey friend (Ben Affleck) had not slipped him a horse tranquilizer he would probably not have hired an even more dopey kid (Dustin Milligan) to seduce his wife, the theory being that if she cheated he would be free to do likewise.

Bateman goes a long way towards smoothing the bumps in this tale: you are apt to like him and root for his happiness. His private life aside, the movie's more enjoyable parts involve his job. People who love their work always spark an interest and, like Hank Hill with propane, he is proud of his extracts and the success he has built around them. Of course he still has struggles at the factory. Beyond the everyday demands of the foreman (J.K. Simmons) and gossips holding up the assembly line, the new temp is not as sweet as she appears, and a longtime employee (the versatile Clifton Collins, Jr.) suffers a freak accident which could lead to a lawsuit. While there are no crowning moments like the fax machine beating in Judge's Office Space, these scenes give Extract the slightly exaggerated but genial quality that effectively ridicules modern life. They would, however, be better suited to a sitcom where the wheat could easily fill the allotted time and the chaff could easily fill the cutting floor.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.