IN EXTRACT—the new film from Office
Space director Mike Judge—Ben Affleck has a terrible beard. I
mean, really terrible. It’s the kind of beard one usually sees
in a community theater production of Chekhov, or perhaps glued to the
chin of a fourth grader pretending to be Abraham Lincoln. However, fans
of Affleck will be pleased to know that—despite his terrible,
awful beard (and it really is quite distressingly flawed)—he
steals the show, which is a feat considering he plays opposite a
stellar cast that includes Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, J.K. Simmons,
and the heartbreakingly gorgeous (and boner-inducing) Mila Kunis. It’s
too bad he’s a secondary character.
Bateman leads the cast as Joel, the owner of a small-town extract
plant (which makes almond, vanilla, and root beer flavoring). Sexually
unsatisfied with his wife (Wiig) and bored with his company, Joel
becomes smitten (and boner-fied) by gorgeous grifter Cindy (Kunis) who
concocts a scheme to rob the employees and collect a huge settlement
from a one-testicled man. It’s the sort of story you’ve heard or seen a
billion times—except for maybe the “one-testicled man” part.
The ho-hum plot is repeatedly revived, however, thanks to the
weirdly bearded Affleck, who pulls off a performance that is nothing
short of Lebowski-esque. Affleck plays Dean, Joel’s doped up/spaced-out
best pal, who convinces the stuck-up Joel to (a) hire the dumbest
gigolo in the world to sleep with his wife, (b) take a horse
tranquilizer, and (c) smoke the world’s largest bong with a borderline
psychopath. The result is a huge laugh every time Affleck opens his
mouth.
The rest of the cast and storyline doesn’t fare as well. Bateman is,
unsurprisingly, excellent (as long as you don’t mind that he’s playing
his same character from Arrested Development) and Kunis is
suitably boner-ific, if otherwise uninteresting. In fact, there’s not a
bad performance in the house, but one can only do so much with a
lackluster story that practically dares the audience to care about its
characters. Instead of a new and original work, Extract plays
more like Mike Judge’s “greatest hits,” mashing King of the Hill (small town eccentrics and foibles!) and Office Space (the
monotony of workplace politics!). All in all, Extract is mostly
enjoyable, refreshingly brief, and if nothing else, it has the
brilliant Affleck. And that terrible, terrible beard.
