Jason Bateman (right) and J.K. Simmons at the office in “Extract.”
White trash meets white collar in “Extract,” Mike Judge’s workplace comedy — which contains more reality than the last five documentaries I’ve seen.
Halfway between “Office Space” and “King of the Hill,” the movie sets a new standard for chemical food extract comedies.
It’s set at a factory that makes concentrated flavors engineered by Joel, the laid-back owner (Jason Bateman). He oozes frustration when he speaks of the “sweat pants deadline” imposed by his bored wife (Kristen Wiig, in her most substantial big-screen part to date). If he doesn’t make it home by 8, she puts on what amounts to a drawstring chastity belt. Worse, she makes him watch “Dancing With the Stars.” How much can a man suffer? Maybe a hottie temp (Mila Kunis) can make everything better.
After analyzing her intentions with his best friend, a spiritualist-healer-bartender (a shaggy and funny Ben Affleck), Joel decides it would be OK to have an affair with her — if he could trick his wife into having a hookup of her own. The bartender knows just the guy: a himbo named Brad.
Judge keeps popping in farcical elements — not just the man-slut but also a con game, a testicular tragedy and a bong the size of a didgeridoo — but handles them all in a matter-of-fact way that makes the movie dryly believable. Bateman, who was disastrous as a flamboyantly gay character in the recent “State of Play,” makes an excellent everyman around whom the winds of weird blow.
Among his other problems are an insanely chatty neighbor (David Koechner), the kind of guy who likes to lie out in his driveway listening to his car radio and volunteer to
get you tickets to a dinner you don’t want to go to. There is also a freakishly hostile personal-
injury lawyer with a terrifying Gene Simmons hairdo. Wait a minute — that is Gene Simmons, who turns out to be even scarier without his Kiss makeup.
Judge has a feel for working life that is exceptionally rare in today’s movies, virtually all of which are products of a ruling class that simply fakes it when it comes to the shop floor. The worker bees in Joel’s factory are petty, foolhardy, vain and given to inexplicable feuds that cost the company richly. But a manager (J.K. Simmons) is equally sloppy about his responsibilities. He doesn’t know any employee’s name, so he refers to each of them as “Dinkus.”
With its low-key laughs, “Extract” isn’t likely to be the cult hit “Office Space” is (or that “Idiocracy” is becoming), but it’s a solid piece of work — quirky without being twee, funny without forcing its laughs. When you know your characters as well as Judge does, you can get a lot of mileage out of a line like, “How often am I going to meet a girl this pretty and this into food flavoring?”
kyle.smith@nypost.com