Extract (2009)

Quentin Tarantino. M. Night Shyamalan. Jon Favreau. Mike Judge. There are a certain number of writer-directors whose first major film forays take the whole world by surprise. Their point of view is at that moment fresh, one-of-a-kind, unjaded by Hollywood, and (this is especially true in Tarantino’s case) they are not yet convinced of their own hype. Their first films become cult classics, the auteurs are dubbed geniuses, and the world waits with bated breath for second and third helpings.

Those almost always taste like leftover pizza. That is definitely the case with Judge’s warmed-over working man comedy, Extract.

In it, Jason Bateman plays Joel, a regular guy who owns small, Middle American factory that produces the various flavoring extracts (vanilla, root beer, cookies ‘n’ cream) that he’s invented. He’s doing pretty well for himself, lives in a McMansion with his wife, Suzie (Kristen Wiig) but still keeps close ties with his happily ambitionless best friend Dean (Ben Affleck), who tends bar in an airport Marriott. But Joel isn’t happy. His workers are like a bunch of gossipy Keystone Cops; his super-chatty and completely uninteresting neighbor, Nathan (David Koechner), thinks they’re best buds; and worst of all, Suzie wears a pair of gray sweatpants like a cast-iron chastity belt so that the two only get frisky about once every fiscal quarter.

These problems only get bigger when a worker named Step (Clifton Collins) has a freak accident in the factory and is convinced by Cindy, a beautiful — in a low-brow, slutty way — grifter (Mila Kunis) to sue Joel for all he’s got. With all the lawyers around, the rest of the not-so-smart workers become suspicious that the factory is going to be sold and spend much of the film plotting a coup. Joel, who only wants to get laid, becomes fixated on Cindy but thinks he can only cheat on his wife guilt-free if he can get her to cheat on him first. So, on a night of Special-K-and-hormone-fueled mania, he enlists Dean to help him hire a local gigolo named Brad to pose as a pool cleaner to seduce his desperate housewife.

Far-fetched and ridiculous, you say? Absolutely. But so was Judge’s first film, Office Space. The idea that a guy could get hypnotized, stop giving a crap about his job, and as a result get promoted, come up with a plan to steal millions, and get away with it all in the end is crazy. Crazy in a way that you could care about and want to believe. What cubicle dweller hasn’t wanted to show up to the office with one of those electric screwdrivers and dismantle their gray fabric prison cells a la Peter Gibbons? Show me the man who hasn’t wanted to go gangsta on a piece of malfunctioning office equipment, and I’ll show you a man with no soul. With Office Space, even though the scenarios are perfectly ridiculous, the characters are so real and recognizable to audiences that some of us (writing this very review) still can’t watch that movie on a Sunday night.

Unfortunately, that empathy just isn’t there with Extract. Judge’s characters all exhibit that same constant, low-level of unhappiness that his writing feels stock this time around. Perhaps it’s because the intelligence quotient among this bunch is significantly lower. (They’re all like the characters who keep reproducing in Idiocracy, his sophomore film.) Perhaps it’s because, now in their 40s instead of in their 20s, these characters should have it together a little better by now. Whatever, the reason his take on the working schlub is no longer fresh or palatable.

Moreover, the acting is not particularly impressive. Although Jason Bateman has an ever-likable quality about him, it does little to change the tide here. And Kunis, beautiful as she may be, is entirely too old to successfully play the sexy, little, young thing. Surprisingly, the only character to bring a little levity to the screen is Dean. Not only is he the kind of ne’er-do-well but always means well guy we all know, Affleck is clearly having a blast playing him.

Faced with a cast of “meh” characters who don’t make you want to root for any of them, the quantity of outlandish scenarios becomes insurmountable. Do we care if Joel does eventually get laid? Meh. Or how about if Step gets his millions? Meh. Will that Nathan guy ever stop talking? Meh.

Should you go see Extract? Meh.