Extract
Director: Mike Judge
Writer: Mike Judge
Producers: John Altschuler, Michael Rotenberg
Stars: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins, Jr., Dustin Milligan, David Koechner, Beth Grant, Gene Simmons
As long as people are behaving ridiculously, Jason Bateman will be there to sigh at them. Since his rebirth as a weary straight man in Arrested Development, the former teen heartthrob has successfully maintained a dual track career, taking colorful supporting roles in big-budget fare like State of Play and The Kingdom, while proving an invaluable center of gravity in goofy comedies like Extract, the latest live-action feature from Mike Judge.
Judge created Beavis and Butthead and co-created the recently-concluded King of the Hill, and in the live-action film world his resume is brief but notorious – both 1999’s Office Space and 2006’s Idiocracy made hardly a murmur at the box-office, but have comfortably grown cults around their highly-quotable abstractions of our worst tendencies as a species.
They were cartoonish movies, and very funny ones. Extract is less of a cartoon and gives the impression of Judge attempting to toss away his crutches. Casting Bateman is a sign that he wants to feel like the world he creates has a foot and a half in ours, and it’s the right choice for this light distraction about getting lost on the way to building a satisfying life. It’s easy to imagine that happening to a character he plays.
The character is Joel Reynolds, the successful owner of a food additives factory. It’s a proud little place, and Judge lingers on the serene path of bottles and boxes during the opening credits in a way reminiscent of the credits for the Coen Brothers’s own Cult Pantheon member The Big Lebowski.
Joel has a large home with a backyard swimming pool, and a pretty wife (Kristen Wiig) who used to have sex with him. He complains about his domestic troubles to his bartender friend Dean – played by Ben Affleck with the relaxed satisfaction of someone who really enjoys the opportunity to hang out in a Mike Judge movie. What they decide, with the help of some horse tranquilizers, to do about Joel’s complaint is one of those reminders that we shouldn’t want to only watch movies where people have good ideas.
At his factory, his employees are a daily headache, regularly triggering shut-downs and accidents with their mix of idiocy and sloth. One accident costs an employee called Step (Clifton Collins, Jr.) one of a body part of which he has two, but in a place no man wants an incomplete set. This has a vulgar lawyer from TV (a kooky bit of stunt-casting in Gene Simmons) barging in and making multi-million dollar threats, just as a larger company had been looking to buy out Joel and send him off to a comfortable retirement.
Judge builds a delicate pile of troubles out of people attempting to exist in a non-confrontational world – see the amazing agility with which Joel’s neighbor (David Koechner) manages to not take no for an answer. Scenes featuring an unpredictable pot smoker (Matt Schulze), and a restive work force considering a walkout, are the sharpest thrusts of Judge’s thematic blade. Many writers create characters that sound fundamentally of the same mind, because their dialogue shows them cooperating towards an end result. But Judge’s are so addled by their individual eccentricities that they spend most of their time tripping over one another – and that tripping creates the story. Listen to the nonsense argot with which the factory’s forklift driver Rory (T.J. Miller) describes the awful music he plays in his off-hours; this guy’s not articulating effectively to anyone outside his world.
And arrowing into this mess of troubles are two characters defined by the directness of their sexuality. One is a pool boy named Brad (Dustin Milligan) who is terrible at cleaning pools but terribly eager for referrals regarding his other talents. The other is Cindy (Mila Kunis) a traveling scam artist with that special ability to use her sex appeal to gain the upper hand in a way that is so flagrant you cannot ignore it, but so overwhelming you do anyway. She operates at a level of full-speed shamelessness, and is quickly positioning herself to create the most lucrative possible havoc inside Reynolds’ factory.
In spite of its generous array of plot elements and performances (Schulze’s brief moments on-screen are especially perfect) Extract is a trifle when you come down to it – not as thoroughly-realized or wickedly out on a limb as Judge’s previous films. It is not likely to trigger the same cult adulation, but it is a sign of increased subtlety in his craft. He is working with a flavor mixture like that of the late John Hughes – sincerity peppered with strangeness, and an abiding love for the little troubles of life. He is not as natural with it yet but he is getting there. Odd as Joel Reynolds’ troubles seem when mixed all together, taken in turn they are the stuff of utterly ordinary life. Not just any actor can inspire you to care about such things – Judge and Bateman ought to stay in that factory and see what else they can cook up.