Extract

Impressions before seeing it
I liked the cast and had been wanting to see it, but even after buying the Blu-ray ($12 bargain!) I avoided reading the back because the less you know about a movie going in, the better the experience is.

How was it?
Including the extract product as part of the poster offers one meaning of the movie's title, but before seeing it I always had the other meaning in mind: the verb meaning "to remove." I think it applies just as well, because there are plenty of removals and separations going on in Extract. And then there's Joel (Jason Bateman), who isn't "extracting" what he wants out of life. His relationship with his wife (Kristen Wiig) contains no intimacy, his persistent neighbour (David Koechner) is annoyingly boring, his extract plant is hit with a tedious lawsuit, a hot new employee (Mila Kunis) is tempting him, and a friend of his (Ben Affleck, in probably the funniest role in the movie) keeps talking him into drugs and dumb schemes. The fun comes in watching these messes unfold.

I like Mike Judge, but I don't know if I can say that anything he's done was actually hilarious. Yes, Office Space has become a cult hit, and it is funny, but like Extract I feel that the laughs are limited and rarely out loud. Just my personal sense of humour, I'm sure many would disagree. But if a comedy can still be fun to watch without being really joke-heavy (let's call this one joke-medium), I can be accepting of such a movie, and I did laugh, so Extract was a little better than average.

Recommendation
The cast did a great job, and if you're more in sync with Mike Judge's humour than I am, you'll probably enjoy it. Either way, it has entertainment value.