![Mike Judge, director of the 1999 cult comedy Office Space, is back on the big screen with Extract. It stars Jason Bateman as the owner of a food flavoring factory whose wife (Kristen Wiig) won't have sex with him and whose best friend (Ben Affleck) is a druggie bartender. His employees are worse, and ultimately his plans to sell the company "are threatened by a strange, unexpected event" involving [SPOILER] testicles. Reviews are not so glowing, and the Washington Post's Dan Zak couldn't hold his thumbs down lower: "Extract may be the most disappointing American comedy of the decade, partly because it's jokeless and joyless but mostly because it squanders an all-star cast of superb comic talent."Everyone in this movie is pathologically moronic, obnoxious without also being funny, and every scene exists only to irk or infuriate Bateman's character. This worked in 'Arrested Development' because the characters had at least one other dimension besides 'moronic' (usually that dimension was 'funny'). Here, Bateman has nothing to work with... Judge seems to have either a careless disregard for his characters or a stunning lack of imagination. Jeepers, it's bad."](https://api-prod.gothamist.com/images/283981/fill-700x467|format-webp|webpquality-70/)
Click on the film stills above for more on this weekend's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include All About Steve, Gamer, American Casino, Amreeka, Liverpool, Tickling Leo, For the Love of Dolly, Unmade Beds, Ghostbusters and The Big Lebowski.
Published Sep 4, 2009
Modified Sep 4, 2009
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