Extract – Can Mike Judge finally break the mainstream?

When it comes to television, especially animated television, there are a few who stand head and shoulders above the rest. Matt Groening changed animation forever with The Simpsons, then Trey Parker and Matt Stone raised the bar in offensive social awareness with South Park and Seth McFarlane’s cartoon empire will probably be the only thing aside from the cockroaches that survives nuclear annihilation. And of course you have Mike Judge.

If you just uttered the exclamation “Who?” then shame, shame, shame on you. Look him up now. No, its fine, I’ll wait.

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Are you done? Right then, so now you know. Mike Judge’s double whammy of cartoon madness, Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, are two of the most incisive dissections of Americana ever produced, animated or not.  His no-nonsense, sometimes unsettlingly funny portrayals of youth and family in 90s America are more influential than I dare go into here. It is strange then that every time this colossus of animated comedy has tried his hand at live action features, he has always flattered to deceive.

Judge’s two previous stabs at the world of cinema have almost defined the term “cult hit” without ever finding mainstream appeal. 1999’s Office Space bombed out of sight at the box-office, but was resurrected on DVD, becoming a word of mouth hit, especially in its native country. Idiocracy, released in 2006, was plagued by release problems and lack of backing from 20th Century Fox, presumably because a film openly mocking the world’s idiots would antagonise Fox’s target market. It too was a hit upon its home ent. release, notching up impressive tallies in both rental and sales figures.

Enough with the history lesson though – the point is that whilst both these projects had an acquired taste, Judge has, perhaps intentionally, never delivered a film accessible enough to reach the wide audience he so definitely deserves and Extract very much continues in that trend.

The hero of the piece, Joel (Jason Bateman), is the owner of a plant that produces various flavoured extract brands. This is as interesting as it sounds and Joel is stuck in a rut and a frustrating, sexless marriage to Suzie (Kirsten Wiig). When an accident at the plant and the intervention of a con-woman (Mila Kunis) causes the entire business to be threatened, Joel’s life goes even further off the rails into a maelstrom of prescription drugs, industrial action and adultery.

Like Judge’s previous comedies, Extract is about life and the status quo. There’s a serious lack of sound-byte worthy one-liners and not much in the way of large set pieces.  This works both for and against the film, in that whilst there’s plenty of room for Judge to make his points about Midwestern suburban life, it is almost always done at the expense of the pacing, and the film seems a little more uneven as a result.

A more disciplined approach in the editing suite would have lead to fewer occasions where the story seems to grind to a halt. Some of the talent is also criminally underused. Kirsten Wiig is allowed none of the freedom to show off her impressive comic muscles and J.K. Simmons, the thinking man’s supporting actor, could have been used to much greater effect.

Extract is not without its charm though, and there are several laugh out loud funny moments to be had. Joel’s descent into the desperate madness of a trapped man is well held, and Bateman, so often the 2nd tier character, gives as good as he gets as his patience and sanity begin to abandon him.  Clifton Collins Jnr, who should be much more famous and successful than he is right now, delivers an excellent performance as slow-witted but litigious plant worker Step.

What Extract lacks in comparison to Office Space is empathy. Where that film’s protagonist was clearly rotting in cubicle hell, a distortion of the Western ideal, Bateman’s character is, from the outset, in a fairly enviable situation. An enormous house, a beautiful wife, his own company – when a man like that starts sabotaging his own existence, it’s difficult to get behind him as an everyman hero. Consequently those scenes intended to demonstrate his mundane life end up leaving the audience as cold and indifferent as a factory floor.

Overall Verdict: There’s nothing particularly wrong with Extract, but there’s nothing to leave a lasting positive impression on the viewer either. What I was hoping would be Judge’s jump to the mainstream unfortunately ends up being his weakest film yet.

Reviewer: Alex Hall