Written and Directed by Mike Judge

Cast
Jason Bateman as Joel
Mila Kunis as Cindy
Kristen Wiig as Suzie
Ben Affleck as Dean
JK Simmons as Brian

Rated R for language, sexual references and some drug use

There are cold, hard facts in life that we discuss openly:  not everyone gets to be rich, tall or handsome.  But for the most part we don't talk about the fact that some people are just plain dumb, stupid and generally a bunch of friggin' imbeciles.  And if you've ever found yourself in a position of authority, trying to lead them can drive a person mad.  Perhaps alone among contemporary filmmakers, satirist Mike Judge has made stupidity a major theme in his work, most notably in his brilliant but little-seen Idiocracy, which posited a future in which the dim reproduced at such a faster rate than the intelligent that a cryogenically frozen man of “average intelligence” was thawed out to find himself the smartest man in the world.  Extract, his new workplace comedy that will be discussed mostly as a management level mirror-image of his cult classic Office Space, offers a more down-to-Earth perspective.  The movie is slow and unfocused, but it's also awfully funny, particularly if you've ever been forced yourself to lead a combination of the unwilling and the incapable.

Joel (Jason Bateman) is an unhappy guy.  The extract plant he founded is staffed by idiots.  He can't drive home without being accosted by dullard neighbor Nathan (David Koechner).  And his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) has grown kinda disinterested in him personally and totally disinterested in him sexually.  But he can see a light at the end of the tunnel:  General Mills wants to buy his company for a healthy profit that would allow him to retire.  The only problem is that they won't close the deal until a bizarre workplace accident has been settled.  A chain reaction of self-importance and incompetence leading from pouty label-checker Mary (Beth Grant) to new sorter Hector (Javier Gutierez) to incompetent forklift driver Rory (TJ Miller) leads to budding floor manager Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) losing one of his testicles.  Not the litigious kind, Step is perfectly happy to take the settlement Joel's insurance calls for, until he meets Cindy (Mila Kunis), a con woman who started work at the factor to get inside information and plans to romance him out of the largest lawsuit payout possible.  Meanwhile, she keeps Joel off-balance through constant flirting, which in turn leads him to a really unfortunate conversation with his bartender pal Dean (Ben Affleck), who suggests that he hire a gigolo to seduce Suzie and allow him to sleep with Cindy guilt-free.  An accidental horse tranquilizer mixed with a few drinks later, this sounds like a great idea, and Joel and Dean are closing a deal with Brad (Dustin Milligan) to pretend to be Joel's new pool cleaner.  By the time he sobers up, it's already too late, and not only does Brad succeed in sleeping with Suzie, he also falls in love with her.  With personal injury lawyer Joe Adler (Gene Simmons) willing to accept nothing less than Joel losing the company, can anything turn around the worst week of his life?

It takes a while to explain Extract's story, but it never has much in the way of narrative momentum.  Joel is distracted by so many different things that he's never all in on solving any of his problems, and while Cindy does a good job of playing pretty much every guy in town, her plan involves a lot of sitting back and waiting.  What Extract does well is simply observe behavior, particularly stupid behavior, on which it is a kind of Master's Thesis.  Oh, sure, there's garden variety stupidity, like Brad's utter inability to comprehend instructions or Mary's relentless way of turning everything she hears into a reason to hate Hector.  But there's also the stupidity of choice, like the way Joel's right-hand Brian (the always delightful JK Simmons) refuses to learn anyone's name, opting instead to call all the employees “Dinkus”.  Cindy lives her life by the stupidity a pretty girl inspires in any guy she flirts with, and Joel does a pretty good job of destroying his marriage by constantly (and stupidly) taking Dean's advice to get high.  And we all know how smart we are when we're high.  Judge knows how to make stupid funny, and at times, Extract is downright hilarious.  

Because his point of view is from the management level, he hits on something else that doesn't get a lot of play publicly:  how much stupidity we all put up with because pointing it out would just make us feel bad.  A smarter man than Brad would probably end up dead as he continues showing up at Suzie's door long after Joel orders him to end the “job”, but he's so dimly sincere that not only can't he bring himself to do anything to him, he ultimately has to help the guy out.  And the ultimate fate of Nathan is a perfect, and perfectly hilarious, depiction of just what it is we're all afraid would happen if we ever really aired such a persistent dullard out.

Bateman is very funny as Joel, although probably not as sympathetic as Judge might have wished.  Truth be told, it IS hard to sympathize with management, no matter how rightfully frustrated they might be.  Most of the performances are a notch closer to realism and farther from farce than would have been ideal, with Affleck funny but not quite delightful and Kunis and Wiig convincing but not quite funny.  But I really did appreciate the authentic dimness of Koechner and Collins Jr. and Grant's delightfully hard-headed indignation.  And Milligan is downright inspired as the clueless gigolo.    

Extract is a minor entry in the Mike Judge cannon, but it should entertain his fans and amuse anyone who gets frustrated dealing with their co-workers, neighbors or, depending upon your circumstances, gigolos.  There are some big laughs, even if the movie is mostly set for simmer rather than boil.  Just don't tell the stupid guy sitting next to you what you're laughing about.