The Good

Mike Judge has his own brand of humor and filmmaking. Mila Kunis.

The Bad

Sometimes this movie sort of outsmarted itself.Telling the story of Extract really do the film justice because the story in and of itself isn't anything special. Jason Bateman plays Joel, a man who owns a successful flavor extract company. He longs to sell the business, cash out, and hopefully have sex with his wife (Kristen Wiig). Things aren't that simple because she doesn't really want to bed down with him anymore. So Joel and his burner buddy Dean (Ben Affleck) concoct a scheme whereby a gigolo will sleep with his wife.

Or something like that...

Anyway, Joel finds himself getting involved with a new employee on the assembly line named Cindy (Mila Kunis). However, she is after Step (Clifton Collins Jr.) because she is a con artist and he is looking to sue Joel's company after getting hurt on the job. The movie continues this way with viewers either finding the events and dialogue funny or not finding the events or dialogue funny. Eventually, things work themselves out in the only way they can in this Mike Judge universe.

Features

Deleted and Extended Scenes

Are these really the bonus features that are "exclusive to Blu-ray?" Okay, I know this movie didn't burn up the box office but can't Miramax, which is owned by Disney, do better than this? These scenes were cool, I guess. I mean who is going to argue with seeing more scenes with Mila Kunis? Or, who is going to get upset at getting more jokes from Bateman and the other characters in this film? I just think that when you are trying to position viewers to buy your product in the next generation format, why would you not at least give them some sort of supplemental features that behoove users to purchase it for that reason? Just a thought.

Video

1080p High Definition / 1.85:1. The picture on this Blu-ray disc looked good. That said, this is one of those movies that doesn't seem like it needed to be bumped up to the next generation format. There isn't anything that director Mike Judge or Director of Photography Tim Suhrstedt did that really merits this. The movie plays in a fairly typical manner. The shot compositions are straight forward and there isn't anything happening with the colors that need so many extra gigabytes to compress. However, this movie does look good here. Having seen this film in the theater and now on Blu-ray disc, I didn't notice too many things that were different about it, but all in all if you have a Blu-ray player I guess it makes sense to watch this movie in that way.

Audio

English 5.1 DTS-HD MA (48khz/24 Bit). French 5.1 Dolby Digital. Subtitled in English, French and Spanish. The audio on this movie was good. Again, like all of Mike Judges other movies, there isn't anything going on with the sound that is so amazing, so layered, and so rich that users are going to hear things that will blow them out of their chair. I had things decently leveled on my system and I found that I was able to hear everything fine. In fact, when compared with how things sounded in the movie theater, I guess I would say that everything was pretty much on par.

Package

Jason Bateman, sporting a black eye, is shown on this mostly white case with Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, J.K. Simmons and other members of the cast above him. The back serves up three small images from this film, a description of what Extract is about, a Special and Technical Features section and a cast list. Everything plays pretty standard here, much like the movie itself.

Final Word

I could be mistaken but while I thought that Extract was a good movie, I didn't ever get the feeling that it would have the DVD shelf life of say an Office Space or even an Idiocracy. This is a shame because Extract, out of those three movies, is the only one to ever get anything close a real release. Extract is good, it's funny, but it has the kind of humor that one needs to sort of search for. There's no easy laughs or moments of sheer hilarity and Mike Judge wants it that way. He wants viewers to sit back with this Blu-ray disc and not revel in how good it looks (because less be honest, there's no visual flair to the film that even demands that it be in the next generation format). What he wants is for people to spend some time with the characters who inhabit this wild and zany world that he's created.

So... what is my recommendation to users?

I think that Extract is definitely a film that they people should see. Do they need to own it? I am not sure. Do they need to see it on Blu-ray disc as opposed to standard definition DVD? I would say they would be fine simply eschewing the Blu-ray and going for the old familiar standard. That said, I found this movie to be funny and entertaining both when I watched it in the theater and on Blu-ray D.