..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

..Wilmington on DVD ..MCN Weekend

Extract and
All About Steve

Two less-than-great comedies, both well photographed by Tim Suhrstedt, and both with Beth Grant in support, head the meager major release schedule this week. One show has its moments: the goofy, well-cast factory-set joke fest Extract by Mike Judge of  King of the Hill and Office Space. The other, the Sandra Bullock romantic road farce All About Steve, would have almost none, if Sideways’ Thomas Haden Church weren’t around.

I apologize again for the spareness of this week’s column. My 94-year old mother Edna is now being cared for at home by hospice nurses. Get well, dear mother.
         
Back to the sparse movie scene.

Extract (Two-and-a-Half Stars)
U.S.; Mike Judge, 2009
     
Mike Judge‘s Office Space was an oddball little comedy gem about the American workplace -- so dry and laid back and keen-eyed that it survived an initial commercial flop to become a video cult hit. Judge‘s new workplace comedy Extract, which has one of the weirdest titles I can remember (it‘s set in a vanilla flavor extract bottling plant), probably won’t attract a cult. But it does dispense a fair amount of laughs, more of which come from character (and skilled acting) than scatology, sexual excess or fart gags. And that’s despite the fact that Judge’s ticket to fame was Beavis and Butthead.
     
Jason Bateman plays a likeable shmo of a capitalist named Joel, an amiable factory-owner and creator of the flavor extract, who’s trying to sell his plant, while coping with disgruntled or uneasy workers (and at least one who had one ball blown off in a floor accident), a sexually bottled-up wife (Kristen Wiig as Suzie), his pothead-bartender best friend Dean’s cannabis philosophy and dubious advice (Ben Affleck), a witless lothario pool cleaner who seduces Suzie at Joel’s own behest (Dustin Milligan as Brad), a sexy, sexy pathological thief (Mila Kunis as Cindy) -- and a neighbor (David Koechner as Nathan) who drives him crazy with his endless, drawling, slow-as-molasses-extract attempts at neighborliness. Nathan, by the way, is almost a great comic character, and he’s the source of one of the year’s darker pratfall jokes.
     
A lot of the pieces of  Extract are quite good, the mood is both mellow and acerbic. And the ensemble is unusually right on; the cast includes JK Simmons as Joel’s right hand man Brian, who calls all the male employees Dincus, and Gene Simmons, (no relation, I think) as the ferocious celebrity lawyer Joe Adler. There’s also a fantastic bong scene with Bateman and Affleck.
    
Still, the movie, good as its sections can be, doesn’t jell or connect in the way, say, a classic screwballer would. The romantic subplot doesn’t click either, despite a slick set-up. But Judge and Company did make me laugh a little, which was something.      

_________________________________________________________


All About Steve (One-and-a-Half Stars)
U. S.; Phil Traill, 2009
   
On the other hand, All About Steve is mostly as laughless and annoying as its title, and that unfortunately goes also for its main character, Mary Horowitz (played by star Sandra Bullock). Mary is a Sacramento newspaper crossword puzzle crafter who develops a mad crush on a likable, good-looking TV news cameraman named Steve (Bradley Cooper, the stud-guru of The Hangover), loses her job when she does a crossword titled All About Steve composed of nothing but Steve references, and then pursues the cameraman relentlessly through the West, to an improbable mine cave in endangering lovable deaf children, where she becomes an outlandish heroine.
   
Almost nothing in this movie makes sense, beginning with the notion that Bullock‘s Mary, the sometime knockout we see here is a wallflower, even granted her signature high shiny red boots. And would Steve would run away from her first-date assaults on his manhood faster than consummation? Would Mary really get fired for her cute little crossword love-poem? (Where are the editors in Sacramento?) Would she really get deliberately ditched by a bus driver when she paid her fare? What fuels her sudden obsessive cutesy-psycho Fatal Attraction odyssey? What about that lame Ace in the Hole cave-in rip-off? What about….The list is endless
     
All About Steve is not only mirthless. It’s one of the most predictable-yet-illogical movies around, despite the cast and the would-be sharp packaging by American-born, British-raised director Phil Traill. As mentioned, Thomas Haden Church reliably supplies some laughs as Hartman Hughes, Steve’s on-camera newshound teammate (“This is Hartman Hughes, reporting from the Edge“), and so does Ken Jeong (also of “The Hangover”) as the team‘s producer/third member. But they aren’t enough. Our condolences to Ms. Bullock, who also produced this cliché-dump. Find a  good crossword instead.   

Read Michael Wilmington on DVDs


- Michael Wilmington
September 3, 2009

Recent Columns

8.27.09 - Play the Game, Still Walking
8.20.09 - Inglourious Basterds, The Marc Pease Experience, Post Grad
8.13.09 - The Time Traveler's Wife, Ponyo, and Bandslam
8.6.09 - Julie and Julia and A Perfect Getaway
7.30.09 - Funny People Plus, Thirst, Adam, and Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg
7.23.09- Orphan, The Ugly Truth, The Answer Man, Shrink, Katyn
7.16.09- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, (500) Days of Summer, Three Monkeys
7.9.09 - Humpday, Soul Power and Il Divo
7.2.09- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Hurt Locker, The Girl from Monaco
6.25.09 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, My Sister's Keeper, Cheri
6.18.09 - Whatever Works, The Proposal, The Taking of Pelham 123
6.11.09- Away We Go, Moon, Food, Inc.
6.04.09 - The Hangover, Land of the Lost, My Life in Ruins
5.28.09- Up, Drag Me to Hell, Departures, Outrage
5.21.09 - Terminator Salvation, Night at the Museum 2, Dance Flick, Easy Virtue
5.14.09 - Angels and Demons, Summer Hours, The Brothers Bloom
5.07.09 - Star Trek, Next Day Air, The Limits of Control, Rudo y Cursi, Battle for Terra
4.30.09 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Hunger
4.23.09 - The Soloist, The Informers, Tyson and Fighting
4.16.09 - State of Play, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, American Violet, Is Anybody There, The Song of Sparrows
4.09.09 - Observe and Report, Hannah Montana: The Movie, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Gigantic, and Sin Nombre
4.02.09 - Fast & Furious, Silent Light, Sugar, Adventureland, and Paris 36
3.26.09 - Monsters Vs. Aliens, The Haunting in Connecticut, Z, and Shall We Kiss?