'Extract' Review: Good Performances Aren't Enough

Writer/director Mike Judge’s “Extract” is being promoted as: “The creator of OFFICE SPACE heads back to work,” but this isn’t exactly true in the purest “Office Space” sense. Our protagonist Joel (Jason Bateman) does spend time at the company he owns, a flavor extract plant, but for the most part those goings on are a subplot to what is essentially a relationship comedy — and only a mildly amusing one at that.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics.

The clouds seem to finally part when General Mills makes an offer to buy Joel’s company. Eager to get out from under the thankless role of employer and escape the never-ending hassles his eccentric staff puts him through, “Sell!” Joel says, and then the mishap occurs. In what’s commonly known as an industrial accident, Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), loses a testicle and the sale of the company is put on hold due to all the unknowns surrounding a personal injury lawsuit.

Thankfully, Step has no desire to take advantage of the situation. All he really wants is a promotion to Floor Manager. Joel’s okay with that and once more the skies clear until the gorgeous, cunning, but still somewhat naive Cindy (Milas Kunis) arrives on the scene to complicate both the lawsuit and Joel’s love life. Having thus far coasted on her looks and made her way through life as a small-time con artist, Cindy sees the loss of a testicle as a shot at the big time.

Batemen plays put upon about as well anyone out there, his Joel is no exception and he and the whole cast are the best part of a movie that has some fine pieces but never works as a whole. The plotting is choppy, the laughs sparse, and even for a somewhat off-center comedy, Joel’s actions – which turn most of the plot – strain credibility. My abiding affection for “Office Space” is well documented, and no one would argue that much beloved workplace comedy exemplifies tight plotting, but “Extract’s” whole reason for being is predicated on Joel’s inability to get home from work at 8pm and yet after this is firmly established, on at least three occasions, he up and leaves the office on a whim.

One can only suspend so much disbelief.

Judge’s insightful observational comedy is also lacking. “Office Space” (1999) nailed the subculture known as Planet Cubicle, and you didn’t have to live that life to appreciate how perfectly that world was captured. Here you never feel like you’re given the full tour of all the eccentric details that would make up the blue collar small business world of “Extract.” Bits and pieces work: Step’s empty machismo about being the fastest sorter, the tattooed fork-lift operator with the band, the bitter, territorial woman on the assembly line… Unfortunately, they serve only as a taste of what could have been.

Instead, the main focus is on one of those relationship comedies where the audience knows a simple conversation (or leaving work ten-minutes earlier) would solve everything, which in turn makes all the ensuing hilarity feel somewhat forced.

The luminous Kunis is sorely underused. Because the early focus (and the film’s advertising) is on her, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that her character’s primary function is to instigate the main story, not be a major participant in it. On the other hand, Affleck knocks his supporting role out of the park, Gene Simmons has a great time as a flamboyantly unscrupulous lawyer and in what could be a breakout role as the dumbest gigolo ever, Dustin Milligan is responsible for the film’s few memorable scenes.

One could argue the unfairness of comparing anything to “Office Space,” but that lightening in a bottle shared many of “Extract’s” plotting and structural problems. What swamped those flaws and made them irrelevant were endless streams of quotable dialogue and one iconic scene after another. “Extract” has some fine moments and will certainly play better on television than up on the big screen, but never gets off the ground. Removed from the shadow of what came before and placed in a vacuum, the result would not be a more entertaining movie just a less disappointing one.