Extract Review

I’ll try to keep this review short and simple, like the film itself.  I’m a fan of Mike Judge and television and films he produces.  I went into Extract knowing very little of what it was about and came out more or less satisfied — and I personally don’t mind putting money in Mike Judge’s pocket.

Joel (Jason Bateman) owns his own business, an Extract bottling plant.  He is having a mid-life crisis.  He’s ready to sell his company and retire, and he’s become bored with his wife, Suzie (Kristen Wiig), who rarely has sex with him anymore.  Suddenly he has an offer for his company that he is more than willing to take, but as luck would have it, an accident at work leaves one of his employees with one less testicle.  Now the people who would want to the buy the company are hesitant pending any legal liability.  Joel is even more depressed.  His bartender friend Dean (Ben Affleck) encourages him to cheat on his wife and take drugs if he really feels so terrible about his life.

This leads to several twists and turns of plot, all showered with amusing characters.  There’s Cindy (Mila Kunis), a con artist who encourages the single-testicled Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) in his lawsuit.  There’s also Joel’s neighbor Nathan (David Koechner) who has the biggest “God I know someone just like that!” part of the movie, to which Koechner turns in a fairly genius performance.

The movie goes and goes, and finally twists and turns in upon itself, ending pretty much where it began, which works in this film even if some of the plot is a bit absurd.  All of the performances turned in are well done — I especially enjoyed Ben Affleck and Clifton Collins Jr. — and the film movies along briskly.  If you’re looking for a little absurdest escape humor, this is your film.  And if you’re trying to decide what film of all the new ones that opened this weekend to see (the others being Gamer and All About Steve) I think you’d be most pleased with this one.  Like all Mike Judge films, it’s short, sweet, and humbly entertaining.