09-10-09 Movie Review: Extract

The only noncommercial movie showing I have listed for the next few days is the ever-faithful Blank Page gallery's Sunday night series, this time featuring Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, described by Leonard Maltin as "Jumbled" and "recommended for New Wave disciples Only," but given 4 1/2 of a possible 5 stars and described as "a poetic, funny, and visually inspired blend of sci fi, detective film satire, and political allegory" by the TV Guide Film and Video Companion. Jean-Luc Godard always inspires love and loathing, so you can check your reactions at 7:30 Sunday at the Blank Page, 917 West Douglas.

And there seems to be some disagreement about Extract, too. Time put it on its short list as a very funny little movie. The Associated Press review in the Eagle gave it 2 stars, Entertainment Weekly gave it a C plus, but I got a kick out of its very silliness and would regard it as ungrateful to give it less than a 3.

Objections are raised to Extract's inadequately developed characters. But there is a breed of comedy that lives on types and cartoons, and the very shallowness of the characters in Extract is a lot of the fun.

Jason Bateman is a typical loser whose consistent bad judgement and bad luck pulled me out of a sour mood by reminding me that there are people less competent at living than I am, at least in the movies: and writer-director Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butthead fame, does not pretend Bateman is anything better. His numb acceptance of whatever fate throws in his path would be maddening in real life is one really cared about him, but he's too much of cipher to get excited about, so we can enjoy the type. His best friend and adviser is Ben Affleck, a pragmatist who probably wouldn't understand a moral rule if one ever occurred to him; there's something satisfying about such a character, which is why we enjoy stories about con men so much - consider Maverick and the Music Man and W.C. Fields, for example. And unlike Mila Kunis's professional thief, Affleck is almost sympathetically not after anything for himself; within the narrow confines of his consciousness, he's really trying to help his friend. Dustin Milligan's gigolo seems to have distant glimmers of right and wrong, but his brain can't hang onto them long enough for him to think about them; he's so dumb that we can forgive him anything. David Koechner's persistently pesky neighbor reminded me of people I couldn't stand in real life, too enamored of his own ideas to listen to anybody else and too confident of his own good feelings to respond appropriately to even the most explicit rejections by the victims of his unwelcome social overures. Beth Grant's assembly line worker's self-righteousness is too funny to be offensive, though one did have to sympathize a little bit with Bateman as her boss.

The only apparently normal person was J.K. Simmons, and he seemed to be enjoying the show as much as I was. There were others I would mention if I had space, especially the victim of the industrial accident and the hilariously awful lawyer, plus Kristen Wiig as Bateman's wife, who turns out to be more sympathetic than I expected.

I enjoyed every one of these cardboard characters, who seemed appropriate to the pretty silly plot; they helped me escape the cares of the day, and were of a piece as comic nonsense. The tone is so light hearted that nobody seemed to be taking anything too seriously, so there was nothing to be troubled about.

All in all, I wouldn't say Extract is much of a work of art. But it was what I needed to cheer up what had started as a blue day.