Movie Review: Extract (2009)
Joel (Jason Bateman) is the successful owner of a food flavoring plant. He is about to sell the factory to General Mill for a nice chunk of money and all he needs to do is keep the company running smoothly while the transaction goes down. Unfortunately, his occasionally incompetent employees provoke an accident that causes a worker (Clifton Collins Jr.) to lose one of his testicles. Joel has to deal with the fallout of this situation while having to deal with an obnoxious neighbor (David Koechner), a frigid and potentially unfaithful wife (Kristin Wiig) and the urge of starting an affair with the intriguing new temp (Mila Kunis).
Directed by Mike Judge, Extract is an amusing comedy set in a mundane workplace much like Judge’s previous movie Office Space (1999). Instead of seeing the movie from the perspective of the employees, Extract takes the perspective of the guys upstairs. Although the movie has some forgettable moments, it also has enough cleverly hilarious patches to make a solid comedy and satire of the modern workplace. Some of the characters appear as caricatures but the movie always stays firmly grounded, honest and satirical. When her purse is stolen, Mary (Beth Grant) immediately accuses the poor Hector, a hard-working and soft-spoken Mexican even though he has done nothing wrong and she has no proof. That’s what I love about this movie, it doesn’t cater to Hollywood’s tradition of over-the-top idiotic comedy just for the sake of easy laughs. Everything flows rather naturally and the closest we ever come to cheap comedy is the hilarious pot-smoking scene.
The movie is entirely carried by the affable Jason Bateman who is, in my opinion, the best straight comedian in show business and he quietly puts together another great performance which is alone worth watching. Joe makes all kind of bad decisions such as hiring a not-so-bright gigolo to seduce his wife, or being too much of a nice guy with his obnoxious neighbor Nathan but he has very much of a well-meaning everyman quality that makes him so easy to sympathize with and laugh at.
SNL’s wonderful Kristin Wigg is terrific as Joe’s wife and I wish she would have gotten a little more screen time to develop her character more. David Koechner gives a great tidbit performance as the incredibly talkative neighbor while Ben Affleck has some fun playing Joel’s dopey best friend. On a downside, Mila Kunis is pretty to look at, which is pretty much all she did in the movie as her character is uninteresting and flat. It would have helped if her character was more likable (as it is hinted to toward the end) but Kunis doesn’t have the ability to make this apparent.
Despite a rather unfocused script, Extract is an unpretentious and understated feel-good comedy, elevated by a very likable cast. Extract may not be the best comedy ever made but it’s an agreeable and funny ride nonetheless and it would not be surprising if it became another cult classic a few years from now.
B
Notes: Rated R for language, sexual references and some drug use. 92 minutes.
13 Comments
This sounds interesting, indeed. I’m in for anything by Mike Judge (and I wasn’t even aware of “Exctarct’s” existence, shame on me).
Definitely going to check it out.
I liked this movie a lot too. I still feel like nothing he’s done has compared to Office Space but this is as close as he’s come. Idiocracy was a clever premise and provided some dumb laughs but just didn’t do it for me. Also, I love seeing Wiig slowly transition to the big screen. She has the potential to be the biggest thing to come out of SNL since Will Farrell. I actually think she’s one of the funniest cast members they’ve had in the entire 30 year span. Also, she seems to be getting hotter… is it just me?
Mostly “Extract” relies on Jason Bateman’s considerable comedic gifts, but Ben Affleck turns in a whopper of a funny performance. I really think he makes a better character actor or director (see “Gone Baby Gone”) than he does a headliner. I’m also happy to see Clifton Collins Jr. getting a visible role here — he’s been slaving away in bit parts for years, but he has the ability to make even the itty-bittiest roles memorable.
I completely agree. Jason Bateman’s career ressurection is a pleasure to see and I love everything he’s in. He just makes everything better. I also like what Ben Affleck has done… disappearing for a while and returning in strong bit performances (Hollywoodland, State of Play) and doing more work behind the camera. I am also happy about Clifton Collins Jr. I just hope he doesn’t take his recent success a bit too far. Certain roles like Extract, Boondock 2 and Crank 2 are pretty out there. I hope they help and don’t hurt!
@ Ventilation Shaft: You should enjoy this one, let me know what you think!
@ Kaiderman: Yea Idiocracy was very disappointing and the cast was mediocre. I also agree about Kristin Wigg and it’s nice to see she is not be typecast into cheap comedy type characters.
@ M. Carter: Definitely agree about Ben Affleck being a better fit when he is not in the spotlight. People had so much expectation of him becoming a huge movie star but he never really had the chops or charisma to become one and that’s totally fine.
We’ll see how Affleck fares as a leading man/director again with Jon Hamm in The Town.
I adore this movie! I had a pretty high expectation after seeing the hilarious trailer (http://wp.me/pxXPC-ds) and I wasn’t disappointed. I might even rate this higher than Office Space though that one probably has more memorable characters. But Bateman is just brilliant and his ‘straight face’ is just tailor-made for the role. I agree with Meredith that Ben Affleck has great comic timing, in fact, his reaction upon seeing Mila Kunis’ character is what totally sold me on the movie. I must’ve re-watched that part in the trailer a dozen times! In fact, you can say he ‘redeem’ himself here after all the duds he’s been in. Affleck is playing serious roles in The Town and The Company Men next, but I hope he does more comedy in the future.
Darn! I just left a super long comment and suddenly it went poof! Not sure what happened… well, I’ll just say it again I agree about this movie and your assessment about Bateman. I also think Affleck has great comic timing.
Lol Ruth, I saw your comment in the spam queue and salvaged it. It probably was classified as spam because of the link
Oh I see (sheepish smile)… it happened on mine too where a frequent commenters’ comments end up in Spam, not sure what happen.
Pretty generous review, thought the only redeeming aspect of this one was Ben Affleck. Hope you’re right about the eventual cult status though.
As a fan of Mike Judge I definitely had to check this movie out. However at the same time I kept an open-mind and tried not to set my expectations too high. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. The only thing I didn’t like was the Mila Kunis storyline, it definitely felt shallow and needed to be expanded more.
Welcome Dreher Bear and thanks for leaving a comment. I completely agree with you about the Mila Kunis storyline. It was almost extraneous and probably would have worked better with a better actress with whom we could have empathized a little more.
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