The opening titles to “Extract” are given in an unadorned and inoffensive font that might easily be confused with a word processor default, one whose countless unconscious viewings have made it seem completely unremarkable and therefore ill-fitting of the spotlight. Such is the problem with this new film by Mike Judge, whose humor has become so normalized from 13 seasons of “King of the Hill” and your friends’ endless quoting of “Office Space” that “Extract,” in retracing successful formulas, appears completely unmemorable.

The film follows Joel (Jason Bateman), who in graduate school discovered a way to improve the vanilla extract that we all can’t help but sniff every time it crosses our path. Now wealthy and unhappily married, Joel, who would be indistinguishable from Michael Bluth in a police line-up, manages the small factory that produces several flavors of extract and spends his days putting up with his inept employees, who, true of any Mike Judge workplace, occupy some middle ground between funny and annoying. From there he races to get home before his wife double knots her sweatpants, ensuring his sexual frustration for another day, and eventually ends up at a hotel bar, tended by an awesomely bearded Ben Affleck, the spitting image of any member of Nickelback.

Of course, this equilibrium, no matter how pathetic, must get disrupted, and, beginning with a double-take-worthy industrial accident that makes a piñata of a floor manager’s groin, Joel’s dream of selling off the company to retire far away from the factory floor and its workers begins to slip further and further away.
From here the plot twists and turns but really does nothing more than introduce Joel to a series of ridiculous characters who must adhere to the basic laws of the Mike Judge universe. Youth must always appear slovenly and lethargic; women must be untrustworthy; men who are not Jason Bateman (or Ron Livingston, for that matter) must revel in their own insensitivity.

With these unbreakable laws in mind, we meet Cindy (Mila Kunis), a con artist whose hotness only emphasizes her flatness; Brad, the pitiably slow-witted gigolo; and Gene Simmons (yes, the one from KISS) dressed as an ambulance chasing attorney, as well as many other caricatures of middle-America archetypes as seen in “Beavis and Butthead” or “King of the Hill.”

The comedy of “Extract” is in the balance of understatement and repetition. It requires J.K. Simmons, who plays another factory manager, to address his inferiors as “Dinkus” several times before the joke starts being funny: a few times to realize it’s a joke and a few more times to grow an affection for it. But the film’s catchphrases pale in comparison to Bill Lumbergh’s sublime “McKay”—maybe because we have canonized Gary Cole’s performance as Lumbergh or maybe because it was just better. Either way, I’d rather just watch “Office Space” again.

2/5 stars

Directed by: Mike Judge

Starring: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons