Extract Review

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 09.04.2009

Mike Judge returns with his third live action movie, a film that does for factory workers what Office Space did for slaves of the cubical.

Written and Directed by Mike Judge

Cast
Jason Bateman ... Joel
Mila Kunis ... Cindy
Kristen Wiig ... Suzie
Ben Affleck ... Dean
J.K. Simmons ... Brian
Clifton Collins Jr. ... Step
Dustin Milligan ... Brad
David Koechner ... Nathan
Beth Grant ... Mary
Gene Simmons ... Joe Adler

Runtime: 91 min
Rated R for language, sexual references and some drug use




Is there something in the water down in Austin, Texas? Richard Linklater might be one of the greatest dialogue driven filmmakers working today but another Austin native might rival the king. Mike Judge, best known for his cartoons, from the juvenile Beavis and Butthead to the southern cooked King of the Hill, is one of the most underrated comic filmmakers working today.

Part of that is the fact he has only made three live action films in the last ten years. He has never had it easy and his masterpiece, Office Space, is a movie that should have failed thanks to studio interference but lives on as a cult masterpiece. His latest film, Extract, is better than the unappreciated Idiocracy and almost reaches the level of Office Space. It is that damn good.

Extract stars Jason Batemen as Joel, the owner of an extract plant he built from the ground up due to his mother’s home cooking and a degree in chemistry. The plant prides itself on being a place very different than the high class factory driven franchises because Joel’s office is right above the plant and is open to any and all complaints to come straight to him. It is a close knit, personally driven enterprise for Joel.

Extract does for assembly line workers what Office Space did for the cubical warriors. While outsiders may look at the ridiculous problems arising in the factory as - well - ridiculous, people who have worked in this type of environment can relate to the absurdity of the occupation. From gossiping busybodies to foreign temp workers to lazy slackers to a member of management who doesn’t know anyone’s name, calling everyone Dinkus, there is someone here you might recognize. It helps that the factory employees are quality actors including Beth Grant (Donnie Darko) and J.K. Simmons (Juno).

I reviewed New in Town, another comedy out this year concerning assembly line workers, and complained they did not give enough attention to the workplace to make you care. That is not a problem here as Judge gives a perfect balance to the problems at work and the problems Joel faces at home. While New in Town is poorly structured and paced, Extract is perfectly paced and everything flows better. It is pure coincidence J.K. Simmons is in both movies.

At home there is a whole new set of problems for Joel including his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) who will no longer have sex with him, his best friend Dean (Ben Affleck) who believes drugs will cure any problems (“I use Xanax for headaches, surely they will help with your sexual problems!”) and his next door neighbor Nathan (David Koechner), a man you hate from the moment he opens his mouth. Just when Joel believes things cannot get any worse, a new temp is sent to his Extract plant in the form of Cindy (Mila Kunis).

We meet Cindy early in the film and know she is a criminal, manipulator and thief. The reason she applies to work at the plant is because an employee named Shep (Clifton Collins Jr.) loses a testical in a work mishap. While Shep wants to take the insurance money and get back to work, she convinces him to sue the company by hiring the attorney on the bus stop billboards, played magnificently by Gene Simmons of KISS (“If he loses both balls he is no longer a man and we couldn’t win this case, but since he still has one ball, dangling there, he is still partially a man, someone the jury can sympathize with”).

With everything falling apart, Joel makes all the wrong choices including, while stoned on an accidental does of Special K horse tranquilizer, hiring a gigalo to see if his wife will cheat on him. The setup seems to be clearly heading in the direction of a dark, black comedy and I feel that would have been the wrong thing to do in this movie. Mike Judge surprises me at most turns, not by swerving the audience with twists and turns but by giving us a nice, straight story. The twist here is that there is no twist and we live in a time where that is the biggest surprise of all. There are at least three times where I believed I saw where the movie was heading but Judge never took that obvious road. It is refreshing to see a movie that trusts its script and actors so much they are allowed to tell their story with no gimmicks.

Every actor in this movie is in top form and Judge once again proves to be a perfect judge of talent. Whether it is good old standbys such as Simmons and Grant, perfect turns from Koechner and Dustin Milligan (the gigalo), or the solid lead roles of Bateman, Kunis, Wiig and Affleck, no one disappoints me in this movie. The writing is crisp and honest, carried out perfectly by his cast. There are moments of slapstick (the testical losing scene, a scene with Joel getting stoned) but at the end of the day this is a dialogue driven comedy and never fails to entertain. Extract is an old fashioned, straight comedy and it is always nice to see one of those these days.

There is also the best, most deserved death scene I have ever seen in a comedy in this film. I have never laughed so hard when someone died in my life. I guess the movie did hold that one last surprise.

The 411: Extract, the third live action film from Beavis and Butthead creator Mike Judge, is an unmitigated success. Judge pulls the best performances out of his actors, from the leads to the supporting cast. The movie is perfectly paced and while the story seems slightly familiar to the subplots in New in Town, with the factory and assembly line workers, Extract is miles above that atrocity. By my count this makes Mike Judge 3 for 3 and Extract comes close to reaching the brilliance of Office Space. This is a comedy that is really, truly funny. I can’t recommend it enough.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]