There are many different ways to skin the proverbial cat that is the audience of comedy. There are the ridiculous slapstick antics of movies like “The Hangover” or any Will Ferrell flick. There are the more realistic, conversational comedies like “Superbad” or “Wedding Crashers.” Then there are many movies that fall on both extremes of this continuum and anywhere in between. Where the hell “Extract” is supposed to fall, the world may never know. This movie is awful — it may garner more cringes than laughs.
Jason Bateman (“State of Play”) plays Joel, the creator and head owner of Reynold’s Extract, a factory that makes and distributes all sorts of flavor extracts from strawberry to cookies and cream. While Joel finds all this very exciting, his home life is dwindling. That is, he hasn’t had sex with his wife (Kristen Wiig, “Adventureland”) in a month, and he thinks his business may be to blame. When the parent company General Mills decides they might buy him out, Joel realizes he could retire early and spend a lot more time with his wife. But when an incident at the factory finds one of his employees without testicles, the deal is postponed and Joel is tossed back into the no sex dilemma. As a result, he finds himself contemplating an affair with a new worker at his factory (Mila Kunis, “Max Payne”), but won’t cheat on his wife unless she did first, so he drunkenly hires a gigolo to test his wife and she fails.
The entire film dances between multiple issues Joel has to deal with, including his wife cheating, his angry employees, a big shot lawyer hired by the employee with no testicles, an unknown thief in his factory and the suggested solutions to the aforementioned problems from his druggie friend, all in only an hour and a half of runtime. There is no specific focus on any of them, but an educated guess would say the movie is about Joel’s sex life with his wife.
It’s hard to comment on the acting because the writing is so bad, but props to whoever did the casting. Bateman, J.K. Simmons (“Post Grad”), Wiig and Ben Affleck (“State of Play”) have all proven in the past they are talented and funny comedians, but they should avoid putting “Extract” on any future r?sum?s.
The method of comedy in this film is, in one word, awkwardness. Bateman is put into many awkward situations that drone on and on. The most prominent would be his neighbor who hangs out in his lawn, runs after his car to talk to him, can’t take no for an answer and keeps it up every single day until a door is politely closed in his face. This is funny for a split second when he’s introduced, but they never make an attempt at humor throughout any of their conversations. All they do is keep having him come back, making the chitchat more and more awkward. This isn’t funny — it’s annoying.
Another example is the gigolo, Brad, who is painfully moronic. Once again, awkwardness ensues when the kid is too stupid to understand a simple instruction and it has to be repeated over and over. It may be funny once, but not two to seven times. It’s not funny — it’s boring.
Another character is Joe Adler, played by Gene Simmons, who is the aggressively insistent lawyer hired by the ball-less worker. Like any lawyer, he doesn’t take no for an answer, which may have a nice satirical effect if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious. It’s not funny — it’s annoying, boring and dumb. Good comedy comes down to good writing, and “Extract” is not a good example.
It’s sad to see writer-director Mike Judge (“Office Space”) can’t follow up a hilarious movie with a moderately decent one. None of the characters are likable because most of them are so shallowly written there literally is nothing to like about them. The deepest characters are Joel and Affleck’s Dean, the druggie best friend, and they are still boring. The only treat of this movie will go to most guys who get to drool over Kunis every once in a while. Most of the dialogue in the movie is boring, and where you would expect a punch line you get nothing. Maybe this movie is supposed to be a groundbreaking venture into the comedic art of awkwardness, which in all fairness can be funny — see “The Office” — but it’s doubtful. Final verdict: never see this movie.
1/2 star out of 5.
