Movie Rec: "Extract"

Mike Judge's comedic genius lies in his simultaneously loving and mocking portrayals of men who are obsessed with mundane things, to the confusion and derision of others. In the case of the long-running "King of the Hill", it's Hank Hill, salesman of propane and propane accessories. In the case of subtle and snide "Extract", it's Joel (Jason Bateman), owner and founder of the titular extract factory. (Their new extract flavor will be "cookies and cream", something which I'm not sure you can distill into a bottle, but why not.) Joel may have learned to curb his enthusiasm around those who don't care about the science behind the product, but when he does start to talk with Cindy (Mila Kunis) about the chemistry involved, his entire face lights up, animated and alive. Later on, when he discovers that Cindy is, in fact, a thief and a con woman who is trying to make a fast buck off an injured plant worker's settlement, he confronts her in a hotel and the thing he's most hurt over is the fact she was never really interested in flavor extracts. Stuff like this is comic gold, and Bateman nails his performance with a bemused timing and world-weary pathos. He's a highly sympathetic straight man and I couldn't bring myself to snicker over his obsession with flavor extracts.

Judge's other comedic gold mine is stupid people--individually and in groups. There's a lot of stupid behavior in this movie, much of it stemming from Ben Affleck (weirdly bearded but terribly funny) and the rest from the employees at Bateman's factory. There's a wonderful scene where the workers, fearing that the company will be sold and they'll be left jobless, attempt to organize themselves into something resembling an intimidating mob and fail, utterly and completely, to strike fear into anyone's heart when none of them want to admit to being responsible for a potential strike. There's some marvelous dumb from Dustin Milligan, too, channeling Brad Pitt as he plays a dim-witted gigolo. It's fortunate that the great majority of stupid in this movie is genuinely funny, or it might come off as smarmy and annoying. Instead, the audience finds themselves almost squarely on Bateman's side, surrounded by dumb, and just barely keeping his head above the water as bad decisions play out and there's no room for a nice guy who loves flavor extracts to just be himself.