Mike Judge made Beavis & Butthead, Office space and Idiocracy, but you wouldn’t know that he also wrote and directed the new movie Extract.

To say “some of the comedy appeared to be extracted from Extract” would be the type of corny joke you’d hear in Extract,

but not here on da Dominion.

Other points …

I’d go into the story but spoiler Nazis will pitch a fit. Suffice it to say that the overall plot isn’t the central problem.

It’s the pacing, characterization and lack of insight we’ve come to expect from Judge. The movie’s title derives from the product produced by the star’s factory: flavored food extract. Judging from the quality of the film, you’d think vanilla would be their most popular seller.

The story drags for a great deal of the movie and there’s no real central crisis to draw you in or make you laugh much. Jason Bateman’s protagonist has a problem it takes weed smoking to confront, then he doesn’t really confront it.  He merely resolves to deal with it like all of life’s other mediocre issues – like spousal infidelity. Even if you do feel for him the sympathy craps out.

All these worthy actors portray decently humorous characters but none particularly shine. The dumb as a bag of rocks gigolo being the funniest character has very little screen time. Seeing him on the job, although we didn’t need a real sex scene, would have been abundant comic fodder. David Koechner’s intrusively boring neighbor was pretty good too.

Bateman plays his typical straight man made notorious from Arrested Development  but there wasn’t enough from his co-stars to contrast against.

I’m not sure what Judge is trying to say with the flick aside from maybe the grass is always greener cliche, but there was no real character growth or reinvention. The established situation of act one is mostly maintained in act three with no real thrill ride, bogus journey or funny trip.

If you have lower expectations its still worth a Netflix queue space, just make sure to use someone else’s paypal account.

(We at da Dominion do NOT endorse or encourage identity theft-  especially not to watch a lackluster movie like this.)

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