Mike Judge's Office Space is one of the funniest movies of the past 20 years, and the follow-up, Idiocracy, isn't far behind. I'm hard-pressed to say, though, whether Extract is a significant leap forward for Judge in terms of story or just not as funny as his earlier work.
Jason Bateman plays the well-to-do but wussy owner of an extract company (he was some kind of chemistry whiz kid) whose professional and personal life unravel thanks to an accident at his factory, a seductive con artist (Mila Kunis), and his own inability to handle much of anything. There's an odd mix of anticipation: "What will happen next — and when is it going to get really funny?"
The film does reside in the Judge universe (lots of soullessness and stupidity), and there are some great lines, like "How often am I going to meet a girl who's pretty and into food flavoring?" But in terms of concentration of laughs, it's more of a syrup than an extract. With Ben Affleck and Gene Simmons as ambulance-chasing lawyers.
