EXTRACT (Mike Judge directed)review by Gary Murray

I am a big fan of Mike Judge, the television mogul. His Beavis and Butthead was one of the greatest little bits of twisted fun on MTV, and King of the Hill is a classic animated comedy, one of the best of the genre.

But as a movie maker, his successes have been very few. While some love his Office Space, I thought it a very uneven bore, bordering on dull. It did have some comedic moments, but the film just didn't gel as a whole. The second film Idiocracy was just a failure in both execution and marketing. So it was with both high hopes and higher reservations that Extract spooled across the silver screen.

The story is of mid-life crisis without ever uttering the phrase. Jason Bateman plays Joel, the owner of an Reynold's Extracts - a small company that he founded. The plant is full of quirky characters, from a pair of Laverne & Shirley-esque line watchers to a heavy metal fork-lift operator. All that Joel and his partner Brian (J.K. Simmons) want is to be bought out and live life on the profits. His home life is a shambles, with a wife (Kristen Wiig) who has no interest in sex and a neighbor who irritates with a slow drawl.

An accident happens with the proposed floor manager Step, (Clifton Collins Jr.), and it makes all the papers. A grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis) reads the report and starts hatching a plan to get money from all involved. She lands a temp job at the plant to better assess the situation for litigation. Instantly Joel is smitten with her and in a drug fueled bit of bad ideas egged on by his best buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), hatches a plan for his wife to cheat on him so he can cheat on her with this young woman. At the same time, Step is seeing Cindy, and she convinces him to hire a lawyer in order to reap millions in a settlement. That lawyer is Joe Adler (Gene Simmons), one of those fly by night litigators who advertises on bus benches. All of these plot threads pull Joel down into a place he never expected to be. It's his confrontation to everything bad in his life that drives the film.



The biggest problem with Extract is the actual story. Like Office Space, the screenplay is very unfocused. It is more amusing than funny, with probably a good half-dozen solid laughs in the 90 minute film. As much as I wanted to like the movie, I just found myself looking at my watch more than once.

The other problem is with the cast. As much as I love the work of Mila Kunis, this just is not her role. She's supposed to be some sort of femme fatale, but it comes across more as a kid trying to play adult. An older actress would have made more sense in the role, because it's hard to believe she is the person she's trying to portray. The other is Ben Affleck as the stoner best buddy Dean. First it is hard to imagine Dean and Joel ever being friends, much less still being friends. He looks out of place with the beard, almost as if he stepped in from another movie. Gene Simmons brings nothing to a one-note role, pushing his sole joke past the point of parody.

But Kristen Wiig once again delivers a strong performance as the put-upon wife. One easily believes her story and the life she has fallen into. She can turn even weak lines into cinema gold. As much as I think Jason Bateman is a wonderful performer, he just looks lost in this crazed world. Like the fish out of water he portrays, he is just a nice guy caught up in circumstances he cannot control. The secondary characters are great and more interesting than the major parts.

Mike Judge should either work from someones else's material or work with another writer. He can direct comedy, he just can't write a solid one. Extract, in the final analysis, is more like an extraction - a tooth pulled from the jawline. It is a pain to be there and a relief once it is gone.

Mark Walters: I have to jump in on this one. I actually really enjoyed the film. I found myself laughing quite a bit, and really thought the characters were fun and interesting. Then again I really like OFFICE SPACE. And to me, this felt a lot like OFFICE SPACE, just more independent in scope. The next door neighbor that David Koechner plays just killed me. I've always felt like Mike Judge is successful because he gets the common man. This film felt like a comedy made by someone who understand what an average 9 to 5 life is like, and we can all relate to that. I don' t know if it's going to go down as Judge's smartest film, but I do think it's a solid entry on his resume. Why the hate Gary?

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