“Extract” Dumb, but Extremely Funny

Dumb, but Extremely Funny

Hotshots” looks at a movie!

EXTRACT is the latest comedy written and directed by Mike Judge, who previously made the 1999 OFFICE SPACE and created the TV series “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “King of the Hill,” and so you know that you are in for a treatment of one poor schlub swimming against a sea of dumb guys and gals.

Rudyard Kipling wrote about keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs. Well, Jason Bateman does an excellent job as Joel, who is trying desperately to keep his head while everyone around him is losing theirs and some are even being stolen.

Joel owns a company that makes flavoring extracts, but his two biggest problems are trying to avoid talking to his annoying neighbor, expecially when Joel is trying to get home to his wife every evening after work before Suzie puts on her sweat pants and ties the knot.

That means that there will be no sex that night, and Joel laments to his buddy, Dean, that there hasn’t been any sex in months.

Dean is played by Ben Affleck, and he is a bartender where Joel used to work. Dean calls himself “an entrepreneur, spiritualist, healer,” but mostly he dispenses advice and pharmaceutical drugs.

When Joel tells Dean about his problem with Suzie and that a new hot-looking temp he hired seemed to be coming on to him, Dean advises, “You hire a gigolo to cheat on your wife.”

That way, you see, if Suzie takes the bait and cheats on Joel with the gigolo, then Joel can cheat on Suzie with the new temp and not have a guilty conscience.

To his credit, Joel resists the advice, but when Dean gives Joel a pill to calm him down, he gets his pills mixed up and gives Joel a horse tranquilizer instead. So, without thinking clearly, Joel takes Dean’s bad advice, hires a dumb kid that Dean knows to pretend to clean Joel’s swimming pool, and even agrees to pay Dean 10 percent.

Meanwhile, a freak and very funny accident at work causes an employee to lose a testicle, the hot-looking temp is much more than she appears to be, and Joel ends up with more problems at work than he has at home.

EXTRACT is full of the dumbest characters you will ever meet, but also extremely funny.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”