Judge it for Yourself
Joel (Jason Bateman) should be a happy man; he runs his own business, has a beautiful house and also a beautiful wife but he is unsatisfied. His wife isn't in to having sex anymore, he is bored of the extract business he runs and an accident at the factory means the company could be sued when a floor manager loses a testicle. But then enters sexy Cindy (Mila Kunis), a new employee who in secret is a con artist and has a hidden agenda for getting the job. The trouble is that Joel really wants to have an affair with her but without feeling guilty for cheating on his wife so his friend Dean (Ben Affleck) suggests hiring someone to seduce his wife so he won't feel guilty.
I hate it when I stumble across a movie which has a good cast and an amusing sounding synopsis only for it to end up a tedious, slog of a movie which is only sporadically funny. That is what "Extract" is, it is a movie which on paper sounds great with a good cast and an amusing set up only for it to end up hard work to keep involved with other than once in a while when something actually funny comes along such as when through a chain of events an employee loses his balls.
What the knock on effect of this is that "Extract" becomes entertaining because of the actors from Mila Kunis turning on the cutesy and sexy as con woman Cindy to Ben Affleck with surfer hair and a laid back attitude. But you want a lot more rather than this simple humour and actors turning out over the top performances to keep you entertained. In fairness there are some amusing moments of observational humour such as Joel knowing that if he gets home and his wife is in her sweat pants he isn't getting any but there still needs to be more as unfortunately "Extract" ends up meandering along going nowhere between the jokes.
What this all boils down to is that "Extract" on paper works but as a movie it doesn't and it needed to be a lot funnier rather than just meandering along filling time. Maybe this is one of those movies which Mike Judge wrote but would have been better off handing it over to another director to inject some life and humour into the final product.
