Mike Judge’s latest workplace comedy
is Extract. The movie
follows Joel (Jason Bateman) the
owner of a flavor extract company,
who’s fairly normal. His company is
very successful and filled with
common but quirky workers who tend
to complicate things. He and his
wife are in a romantic rut. And his
best friend (Ben Affleck) is a
little too lax and whenever Joel
goes to him for advice… his best
friend just offers him drugs.
Extract
tells the story of a normal man and
the normal people in his life when
things take a complicated turn for
the worse. An accident at the
factory brings a lawsuit to Joel’s
worries while he’s getting ready to
sell his company and retire. A temp
he hires- Cindy is secretly a con
artist and Joel decides that he
wants to hook up with her so he
hires a gigolo to seduce his wife so
it’ll be okay to sleep with Cindy.
He does this while not knowing that
Cindy is secretly trying to seduce
the man suing Joel’s company. Sound
complicated? It is, but such is life
and it’s why Extract
is a perfect follow up to
Office Space for Judge.
The movie itself is great. It’s not
as good as Office Space
but it’s in the same vein of comedy.
It’s great for a couple of reasons.
The cast is perfect. Joel is played
perfectly by Jason Bateman. Kristen
Wiig is great as Joel’s wife. Ben
Affleck plays best friend and
partial druggy Dean, and Mila Kunis
is Cindy the con artist. The film
has a great cast and it really plays
to that strength. Whenever one or
more of those actors are on the
screen at the same time the actors
and the characters really feed off
of each other… which is what you
want in a film like this. What isn’t
that great about the movie is its
pace. It’s meant to have a slow pace
but sometimes it’s a little too
slow. Still, that’s my only quip
about an otherwise stellar film.
On Blu-Ray the movie has some
deleted and extended scenes that are
exclusive to Blu-ray. It also has a
great behind the scenes look at the
roles everyone played in making the
movie. It’s especially interesting
because of all of the insight you’re
getting from Mike Judge. He’s done
so much in comedy for past two
decades that it’s really hard to
ignore his impact on the genre,
especially with a film like this
that transcends a little bit of his
writing on King of the Hill
and his workplace comedy with
Office Space.
Extract
is a must own for any Judge fan on
Blu-Ray. The movie isn’t Judge’s
best work to date or anything like
that but it’s a very likable movie
and a clever insight at suburbia,
working in a factory, and what can
happen when one thing goes wrong in
somebody’s life and how quickly that
builds up. This is a great film from
Mike Judge.
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