Smell The Satire: Extract Takes On The Life of the Boss
Posted on Sep 11, 2009 @ 03:47PM - Add a comment
It’s been ten years since Mike Judge became the white-collar working man’s hero with his cult-hit Office Space. Now, the writer-director is lampooning American life again -- but this time, it’s from the boss’s point of view.
Extract centers on Joel (Jason Bateman), an average guy who owns and runs a flavor extract factory. He seems to have the suburban American dream: a good career, a big house, a nice car and a pretty wife named Suzie (Kristen Wiig). His biggest problem -- at first -- is that Suzie isn’t putting out. She’s inexplicably set their sex life on ice with a nightly deadline for “business time,” underlining the message with pair of grey sweatpants that she ties tightly in symbolic chastity. Amid this domestic disappointment arrives Cindy (Mila Kunis), a mellifluous con-artist who arrives at the factory and makes Joel’s heart (and other things) go pitter-patter.
The movie’s set-up teeters between the tragic and the hilarious -- a familiar scene that could just as easily head down the depressing road of Sam Mendes’ American Beauty as it could swing toward the surreal satire that Judge brought to the society-indicting Idiocracy. Instead, a mix of delicate dialogue, deft acting, running jokes and real-life problems (more or less) allow Extract to walk the line, nearly living up to its comedic promise and reigning in the laughs with admirable sensitivity.
VIDEO: Beavis And Butt-Head Make A Cameo On Letterman
Posted on Sep 03, 2009 @ 05:30AM - 3 comments
What's old always becomes new again, and there was plenty of nostalgia in the air Wednesday on The Late Show with David Letterman during Jason Bateman's appearance when two of the biggest stars of the 90s -- MTV cartoon delinquents Beavis and Butt-Head -- appeared in a clip on the show to introduce a scene from Bateman and (creator) Mike Judge's upcoming film, Extract.
