If you didn’t already know the name Mike Judge after Beevis and Butthead, then chances are Office Space introduced you to his work. Judge’s work has always dealt primarily in satirizing the typical goings-on of America, whether they be the mindless chuckling of two metalheads, the monotony of the workplace or the peculiarities of family life. Judge knows his targets and tends to give them a treatment that’s at once both tributary and satirical. For Extract, Judge turns his eye once again to the subjects of the workplace and family, however the result is never quite as sharp and biting as Office Space or King of the Hill.
In a small suburban town, there exists an extract factory built from the ground up by Joel (Jason Bateman), who lives a sexually frustrated life with his increasingly tepid wife (Kristen Wiig). His life is never that far from normal; he’s proud of the work he does, but like any working person wishes he could leave it all behind for a huge sell-off. Joel eventually gets his chance when he learns that a major corporation is eyeing his plant for a buy-out, as long as he can keep the business operating smoothly until the deal is made. Unfortunately, the plant just experienced an accident wherein an employee named Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) had his testicles all but destroyed by a wayward piece of fast-traveling metal. At first he seems to have no intention to press charges until seductive con artist Cindy (Mila Kunis) learns of his potential money-making opportunity and pushes him to seek a court settlement with Joel’s factory. To further her cause, Cindy gets a job at the extract plant, at which point a series of thefts begins to occur.
Joel’s life seems to be spinning out of control. The buy-out is in danger, his wife is sleeping with a pool-boy (whom Joel paid for courtesy of an idea from his best friend played by Ben Affleck), his neighbor won’t stop pestering him, and the employees in his factory are up in arms over the news of possibly losing their job if the business deal goes through. There’s a good mixture of calm and boisterous characters and, if Judge’s commentary is trusted, they come from the writer’s own personal experiences. An interesting aspect of the casting involves the use of an actual factory and thus actual factory workers in the background. The seasoned veterans in the cast provide most of the laughs. J.K. Simmons and Bateman make a good pairing of exhausted blue-collar executives just trying to find their golden goose. For such a pivotal role in the story, Mila Kunis’ turn as Cindy doesn’t really have much strength. She never seems to be as clever or competent as she would need to be to pull off the long-term scheme she cooks up. Equally distressing is the characterization of Step who initially abstains from legal action under the banner of “I’d lose my job”, which does in fact hold true with how he’s initially portrayed. However, for Step to jump from loyal employee to love-blinded prosecutor and back again seems too cheap a change. His return to the same character he started as makes you wonder how he was so easily swayed. Money does strange things to people, sure, but the turn here was awfully convenient and too easily reversed.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The best feature on the disc has writer and director Mike Judge discussing the experiences he uses to inspire a film. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit to come from this featurette is the mention of Harvey Pekar’s notion that everyday life takes a heavy toll on people, in that light the film’s basic premise carries a lot more weight. The extended and deleted scenes are really only for those who found themselves laughing uproariously, otherwise they’ll feel pointless and unnecessary. To the credit of the extra features on this disc, the nearly 11-minute Mike Judge segment was shot in high definition and looks great.
"Extract" is on sale December 22, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy. Written and directed by Mike Judge. Starring Ben Affleck, Clifton Collins Jr, JK Simmons, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis.
