In the movie world, Mike Judge’s most famous piece of work is no doubt 1999′s “Office Space.” A movie that a majority of us working class citizens could relate to and laugh at. One could even say it inspired the movie and TV industry in the way of entertaining viewers with work-related comedy, like The Office, which came out shortly afterward in 2001 (the original UK series).

But it has been 10 years since Mike Judge made Office Space, and within that time bigger and better things have come out in the comedy world. Comedy has evolved for its audience, who are always hungry for better, fresher, and, at times, more vulgar comedy. I was eager to see if Judge’s humor could still stand tall, or has it faded with the times. Read on for my full review.

Upon seeing the trailer for Extract, I thought to myself, “Ok, this is basically Office Space again, but replace the office with a manufacturing plant.” The thought of Extract essentially being a copy of Office Space left me kind of “meh…” about seeing it. But I was also conflicted because the casting looked so promising. Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, and J.K. Simmons! My god, what an awesome line up.

To my delight, Extract is a great movie. All my worries about Extract copying Office Space were cleared up. And I should have known not  to be worried all along, because what works best about this movie, and ALL of Judge’s work, is the extremely unique characters he creates, not the setting or overall plot. And Extract has a full deck of bizarre characters that conflict with each other to create comedy gold.

Perhaps what I liked most about Extract is the main character Joel, played by Jason Bateman. Joel seems to be the most down to earth character Mike Judge has ever put in for a lead role. Peter Gibbons (main character) from Office Space doesn’t count because majority of the movie he was unnaturally laid back due to hypnotism.

The reason I really dug Joel being a normal guy as the lead is that it made it easier to relate to his character and the entire setup for the movie. When crazy shit happened around him, he reacted how most normal people would. Freak the hell out, get drunk, let your not so responsible buddy talk you into doing something you will regret later.

Since I was able to place myself in Joel’s shoes, not only was I laughing at what was going on around him, but I was also able to laugh at how he reacted to the situations because I most likely would have done the same thing, or something close to it. Case in point, it made the entire movie feel more real. And the more realistic a comedy feels, the funnier it is. Especially when you see normal people thrown into very chaotic situations and they start to mentally crack from it.

Moving on to the rest of the cast. You have a lot of diversity in this movie with characters. My favorite of the bunch are the collective ignorant plant workers whose faces were replaced by many people that I have worked with in my past jobs. I swear Mike Judge is still working a regular day job so that he can surround himself with these types of crazy characters to draw inspiration from.  He knows exactly how to bring out certain traits in each character to make them a joy to watch and laugh at. And this is essentially the best part of the movie. Extract works well as a comedy because it has such a diverse cast of characters that conflict perfectly with one another to provide laughs through the entire movie.

The various plots going on in the movie serve well enough to keep things moving. There is nothing spectacular about the intertwining plots by themselves, but then again, this is a comedy that mainly focuses on its characters, so the lack of a great plot is by no means a complaint.

I don’t have any real complaints about the movie. Overall, it is a solid movie. If I HAD to say anything negative about the movie, it’s that the comedy never stayed strong with me after the movie was over. The comedy high that I got from every funny scene never really stayed with me after the scene ended.

Overall, I give Extract a 4/5.

I definitely recommend this movie to everyone. Some will laugh more than others, but if you work for a living, or find yourself surrounded by just really odd and annoying people in your life, then you will like this movie.

Blu-Ray Bonus Features: The bonus content on the Blu-Ray disc is pretty much standard issue. You got your extended scenes and deleted scenes. There is a cool featurette that focuses on Mike Judge’s film making process that is worth watching. All and all, the bonus content doesn’t add any value to the package as a whole, but you should know the deleted / extended scenes are only on the Blu-Ray disc. So if you like to watch all that stuff, then make sure you get the Blu-Ray copy.

Trailer

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