Extract

Extract-2009

A decade after Mike Judge made the cult-classic Office Space, Judge has traded in the white-collar for a blue one, and not much else, with his newest comedy Extract. After Idiocracy’s failure, it seems like Judge has gone back to the well to retread some of the same ground he did ten years ago.

           

Judge once again portrays the monotony of the modern workplace; this time settling for a flavor extract company built from the ground up by Joel (Jason Bateman), who is looking to sell but has problems after a industrial incident at work costse employee Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) one of his testicles. With Step’s space open, in comes con artist Cindy (Mila Kunis), trying to convince Step to sue, hopefully earning her piece of the winnings, while trying to swindle Joel into romance. Joel, who has recently had bedroom troubles with wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig), is interested in Cindy, yet feels too guilty to act on these urges. Scraggly best friend and former co-worker Dean (Ben Affleck), suggests hiring a male prostitute to seduce his wife so he can carry on with his plans guilt-free.

While Judge’s characters usually reflect the over-exaggerated, yet lovable versions of familiar stereotypes, such as Hank Hill of “King of the Hill” or Peter of Office Space, here his characters are cruel and downright mean, making it hard to connect to anyone. Step is the only respectable employee in the bunch, while Affleck, even though he does seem to be channeling Deidrich Bader’s character from Office Space, does get the only hilarious moments. Kunis, who has shown great talent in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, just simply play the stereotypical “hot new girl”. J.K. Simmons, who plays a co-manager of the factory, and Wiig are wasted as one-dimensional jokes and David Koecher as annoying neighbor Nathan, makes his continuous droning feel simply like another Bill Lumbergh.

Idiocracy might be known as Judge’s film about idiots, but Extract has its fare share as well. Every character has the stupid cranked up to extreme, leading each character to make the worst possible decisions. It presents these one-joke characters and shows how far down their horrible choices will take them.

           

It seems like this environment could be the setting for a take on greed in modern corporations, yet little is done to evoke any sort of deeper meaning, instead resorting to drug and testicle humor. For Judge, who usually has a larger point to his films, Extract just seems lazy.

Extract does not try to do anything unique or really have any ideas of its own. Judge’s latest feels like a repackaging of the caricatures and jokes that he has made in his previous work, yet without the underlying morality and compassion that we feel for these characters. Instead we are left with characters that have little to no substance and much like the extracts that Joel makes, just seem like an aftertaste of an original product.