Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

The workplace is undoubtedly a great environment to base a whole lot of comedy, and the first time writer-director Mike Judge wrote a film about how much genuine inanity was borne in the world of white-collar business, he called it OFFICE SPACE, and it was good. Judge had already established his place as a scary observer of human behavior with "Beavis & Butt-Head" (both the TV show and the feature film), but Office Space was so right on the money that a generation of middle managers and cubicle dwellers turned the film into their source for the finest quotes the world had to offer at the time. Judge hasn't exactly transplanted the OFFICE SPACE template and moved it into a factory assembly line setting for his latest film EXTRACT, but the results are just as funny, even if some of the best humor takes place outside of the work environment.

The first thing you notice about EXTRACT is that the employees actually seem to like their boss, Joel (played by Jason Bateman), who built this small, privately owned factory that makes a special brand of extracts with flavor that lasts longer. Joel has done well for himself, but he's frustrated because his wife (Kristen Wiig) hasn't slept with him in weeks. After a serious industrial accident involving an employee (Clifton Collins, Jr.) losing a testicle, a temp shows up to work on the line in the form of Mila Kunis' Cindy, a seemingly sweet, beautiful woman who seems genuinely interested in Joel's line of work. After some prompting from his best friend Dean (the bearded Ben Affleck, as a sort of stoner philosopher), Joel realizes that the only way he could even dream of cheating on his wife with Cindy (he kind of makes that leap with consulting Cindy first, but let's not get lost in the details) is if his wife cheated on him first. One male prostitute (the hilarious Dustin Milligan) later, Joel is ready to make a play for Cindy, but nothing in this movie is that easy. In fact, that's part of the problem I had with EXTRACT.

The jokes are undeniably there, and they are many. The problem is, there's too much story for a film like this. General Mills might want to buy the Joel's company once a potential lawsuit from the ball-less wonder goes away. The always-reliable J.K. Simmons is on hand as Joel's right-hand man; he starts out as a strong supporting player, but by the end becomes a glorified messenger boy. The subplot about the lawsuit is tedious, and a cameo by Gene Simmons as the injured man's shark lawyer does not work. I was especially disappointed in Kunis' storyline as a drifter/con artist who targets a couple men in this story and essentially vanishes from the plot for huge chunks of the movie.

That said, I'm happy to report that what does work far outweighs what does not. Milligan's man-whore role is the best thing in the movie. His dumbness reaches levels rarely achieved on screen or television. He's magnificent. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention again how great Affleck is. He's not the star of the show, but he comes in and out in a few keys scenes and knocks the entire production up a notch. The film misses him when he's not there. Bateman is good here as the quintessential straight man at the center of the universe of insanity and stupidity. And the funniest thing is, the further the comedy gets from the main storyline, the more I like it. Take for example, the handful of scenes between Bateman and his clueless neighbor, played by the brilliant David Koechner. These sequences could have easily been cut and you never would have missed them from EXTRACT's plot. But they also happen to be among the funniest moments in the entire film, because they are so grounded in reality that to remove them would have been to remove the very heart of Mike Judge's strength. Judge gives voice to the people and events that we find so frustrating that we don't have words for them... but he does. It could be a constantly malfunctioning fax machine or, in case of Koechner, a neighbor who will not take No for an answer, even after you tell him "No."

I'm also ridiculously pleased to see one of Judge's works get this much of a pre-release buildup, courtesy of Miramax. After the abortion-like release of IDIOCRACY by Fox, or the unceremonious death of the still-strong "King of the Hill," also by Fox, I'm happy every time I see a commercial or a trailer for EXTRACT, a film worthy of all the buzz. The film is sick, twisted and drug-fueled enough for all the freaks who took to OFFICE SPACE, but it still offers an inherent sweetness that is crucial in a film where many of the characters could be wholly unlikeable in the wrong hands. Fortunately, Mike Judge has the right hands to both write and direct something that seems unsophisticated on the surface, but strikes a surprisingly solid balance. Most importantly, you will laugh... hard and often.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
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