Mike Judge’s cinematic legacy is secure with his searing satire Office Space. Remarkable for uncovering the backwards cult of personalities within confined work spaces, begetting a rabid cult following and pre-dating Ricky Gervais’ The Office by a couple of years, Judge is now a vaunted chronicler of those poor souls who must co-exist amongst the stupidity of others. Extract is actually more nuanced than that. Jason Bateman owns a food extract company and doesn’t witness incompetence around him, but desires, frustrations and destructive fantasies, comparable to his own. Judge’s great insight has been to make his protagonists no better than the ingrates they tolerate.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.
