Step 1: Extract yourself from your couch and go see this agreeable working class comedy.
Step 2: Revel in the mundane world of factory work. Extract follows Joel (Jason Bateman), a small factory owner who makes food flavorings, i.e. vanilla, cherry, root beer, etc. He takes great pride in his little can-do production, but unfortunately, not everyone feels his same enthusiasm. Most of his employees are either disgruntled, can’t speak English or ready to retire. To top it off, Joel’s home life isn’t much better since his wife (Kristen Wiig) is too bored to have sex with him. Once the sweatpants are on, that door is CLOSED. Joel finds some solace talking with his bartender friend (Ben Affleck), but he is constantly pushing the healing powers of drugs on the reluctant Joel. It’s not until a beautiful con artist/sociopath named Cindy (Mila Kunis) comes into town that things start getting even more wacky for Joel – in a good way. I think.
Step 3: You gotta love Jason Bateman. I mean, this is a guy who started as a teen actor in the sitcom Silver Spoons and B-flicks like Teen Wolf Too, for chrissakes. Thank god for Arrested Development for showing us Bateman’s true talent; he’s probably one of the best straight men in the comedy biz. Sure, he can get goofy on his own (Pepper Brooks in Dodgeball is a good example), but with his excruciatingly hilarious deadpan reactions and delivery, he excels at accentuating everyone’s idiocies and eccentricities to the nth degree. Especially the rest of Extract‘s superb cast – from J.K. Simmons as Joel’s second-in-command, who calls all the employees “Dinkus,” to Affleck’s kindly hippie to David Koechner as Joel’s incredibly annoying neighbor. The exquisitely gorgeous Kunis keeps playing the cool kid with aplomb, as she did in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But the real casting gem is KISS rock star Gene Simmons, who plays an ambulance-chasing lawyer. He might be getting calls from this.
Step 4: Also gotta love writer/director Mike Judge. This is guy who not only brought us Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, but the beloved cult classic Office Space. Seriously, without that movie, we’d probably never have The Office. Judge once again expertly taps into that mindset of the working class, this time a tad more blue collar than the cubicle-hating schleps. It’s Judge’s dry sense of humor and ability to succinctly capture those characters we see all the time in the work place that make him an excellent commentator on the American work force.
Level of difficulty in watching Extract: Easy peasey. Although it may not quite hit the same chord as Office Space, it’s sure to be another Mike Judge success.