The subtle tangy spice of Judge's 'Extract'
Extract
Running time: 90 minutes
MPAA rating: R (profanity, adult situations, drugs)
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Unlike the broad comedy of Mike Judge’s animated work (“King of the Hill” and “Beavis and Butt-head” before that), the humor of Judge’s live action projects seeps gradually into the psyche.
“Extract” brings all the wit and creativity of Judge’s under-appreciated, acerbic office comedy “Office Space” (1999) to the big screen. It just orchestrates human foibles subtly; especially in the early going.
That could serve up a comic curve ball to movie fans more accustomed these days to a lowbrow guffaw or two before the opening credits.
Set primarily in a flavor extract plant not unlike Austin’s former Adams Extract facility, Judge’s latest only appears to deliver plain vanilla comedy from the big screen. The humor is there. It just takes a while to bubble to the surface.
Jason Bateman, the adoptive father-to-be in “Juno,” takes on the not-so-spicy role of Joel Reynold, founder and owner of fictional Reynold’s Extract. Joel’s a blue collar kind of boss. Usually, he keeps a close eye on the assembly line he can see from his office window.
Joel’s distracted, though. His wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig of “Saturday Night Live”) is distant lately. If Joel isn’t home by 8, his wife has changed into her sweatpants. All hope of intimacy is lost.
“Extract” is the kind of dialogue-driven comedy where the troubled leading man confides in his bartender. In this case, the guy snapping the caps off longnecks at Sidelines, a hotel sports bar, is Joel’s old college pal Dean. That’s Ben Affleck acting philosophical and dumb behind a full beard.
Dean, in addition to suggesting drugs as a diversion from sexual frustration, encourages Joel to hire a gigolo to temp Joel’s wife with sex. If she refuses, there’s no real trouble at home. If, on the other hand, Suzie takes the bait, that should free up Joel’s conscience.
He’s toying with the notion of having his own affair with a flirty new assembly worker named Cindy (Mila Kunis, the voice of Meg on TV’s “Family Guy”), who has yet to present herself to him in sweatpants.
Judge directs from a script he began shortly after “Office Space” came out. He scratches some of the same insecurities Judge mined 10 years ago. The workers may be blue collar this time, but there’s no lack of backstabbing, personal agendas and other devious activity.
Unfortunately, Judge’s characters pop from the screen with more force when they’re animated. Bateman, so good opposite Ellen Page in “Juno,” plays it very low key here. Things heat up a bit when he mixes it up with Kunis, but Bateman and Wiig have so little screen chemistry that it’s no wonder their marriage has cooled significantly.
Surely it has something to do with Judge’s casting judgment, but Canadian Dustin Milligan (“The Messengers”) plays gigolo Brad with dim-witted bravado that’ll remind some of a younger Thomas Haden Church (“Sideways”).
Much of the humor in “Extract” may simmer too subtly for some. Let the plot come to a boil, though, and Judge delivers in his own deliciously peculiar way.
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