Extract (***1/4)

This is the third film from Beavis and Butthead/King of the Hill creator Mike Judge. Office Space, his first, flopped at the box office but became a cult classic via cable and video, while Idiocracy barely even received a theatrical release, but wasn’t bad. Extract sort of inverts the viewpoint of Office Space, in which underutilized white-collar workers rage against dull or foolish middle management types. Here a factory owner (Jason Bateman) is the mild-mannered hero, with a motley assortment of blue-collar types nursing petty gripes and falsely accusing the new guy, a Latino, of stealing. Frustrated by supervising this bunch and by a nearly sexless marriage, he longs to find a buyer for his business and cash out.

Add in a pretty swindler (Mila Kunis), a flaky bartender (Ben Affleck), a wifty giglo, and an assembly-line mishap and you have most of the comedic ingredients. It has a lot of the feel of Office Space in being dense with unpredictable plotting, which I won’t give away, and memorable characters. I haven’t even mentioned JK Simmons as Bateman’s second in command, who refers to most of the employees as “Dingus,” Kristen Wiig as his wife, and a creepy Gene Simmons (of KISS) as a sleazy lawyer. As with Judge’s other two films, it’s these supporting characters that make the film distinctive. That’s not to say Bateman is dull, just that he’s playing the normal character that keeps the movie from getting too silly.

There’s something about all three of Judge’s movies that makes me want to watch them again, and I never watch movies again. They’re sort of easy to watch. I wouldn’t say any is quite hilarious, but each of them features a bunch of set pieces that continue to amuse even after the movie is over. The running subplot with an unctuously annoying neighbor is one such for me, the character being a less-original counterpart to oily boss Bill Lumberg in Office Space. I’d rank this just behind Office Space overall, too. But I bet if if this comes on cable one day, and I turn it on in the middle, I’ll probably sit down and watch a few scenes and not even worry that I missed the beginning.

IMDB link

viewed 9/05/09 at AMC Loew’s Cherry Hill and reviewed 9/06/09