Extract (2009) - Review

Saying you like Office Space is like saying, “Why yes, good sir, I do enjoy comedy.  And humor, too.”  It’s one of the most classic films from the 90s and holds up pretty well today.  Idiocracy turned up the “humanity is stupid” dial that, while certainly present in Office Space, was toned down to an acceptable level.  Idiocracy was fine, but it lacked a certain subtlety that Office Space had in spades.  And, well, I can’t say anything good about Beavis and Butt-Head or King of the Hill.

Cut to Extract, which came out just a few years after Idiocracy.  I feel like this is the movie that fits most, at least tonally, with Office Space, in the Mike Judge oeuvre.  Instead of focusing on white-collared jobs, Extract focuses more on blue-collared ones, as well as a great many other things such as extortion and adultery, using the same sardonic lens that Judge so masterfully used in his seminal classic.

And now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything...

It helps that the cast is fantastic, albeit a bit starrier than Office Space (seriously I get excited when I see Ron Livingston in a movie nowadays).  Jason Bateman, one of the best straight men out there, gives a wonderfully restrained performance amidst some really crazy ones by Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck and Kristen Wiig.

Office Space had a very specific purpose, and unfortunately Extract is nowhere near as focused or committed to its ‘message’, but that doesn’t hurt the movie too much because classic Judge humor is here and the actors make it work brilliantly.  Its biggest foe is actually Office Space itself, as nothing in Judge’s filmography will ever touch its combination of acerbic humor and mundane setting.  But for what it’s worth, Extract gives it a run for its money.