Extract

This offbeat indie-workplace comedy from Mike Judge, creator of Office Space and TV's King of the Hill, has many promising ingredients, yet somehow none of them quite gel. Jason Bateman plays Joel, a former barman who has turned a family recipe into a successful business for his patented "Extract" juice, employing any number of dorkish deadbeats at his factory. Yet he's unhappy – his wife (played by omnipresent comedy team-player Kristen Wiig) won't have sex; his buddy Dean (Ben Affleck on middling form) talks him into a bizarre plan to trick his wife into infidelity so he can cheat with a clear conscience, and a horrible shopfloor accident looks set to scupper a lucrative takeover. None of the characters and situations is any more than moderately engaging or amusing and it just doesn't lead anywhere at all.