Extract

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The funniest American comedy of the summer.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Nobody is better at capturing the crushing banality of everyday life than Judge.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The kind of smart, openhearted comedy that doesn't come along every day.

Slate Dana Stevens

Extract seems destined to do minor business at the box office but achieve a kind of immortality as a cult DVD, to be quoted from at parties and passed around to friends. Which may be just fine by its creator--as Beavis and Butt-head have taught us, snickering with your friends in front of the television can is one of life's great joys.

New York Post Kyle Smith

White trash meets white collar in Extract, Mike Judge's workplace comedy -- which contains more reality than the last five documentaries I've seen.

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

Isn't an instant classic, but it bumps along agreeably.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Extract is an exuberant original...like no other and one of the best comedies of the year.

Christian Science Monitor Andy Klein

Judge still comes up with enough laughs to deserve our attention. He is helped more than a little by hilarious work from supporting players Kristen Wiig, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, and Dustin Milligan.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Judge is in the business of social satire, and his laughs can sting, but his movie is a comic salute to free enterprise. And, boy, do we need it now.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Affleck ought to do more quirky character roles rather than leading-man parts in action films. Bateman plays his low-key straight man/protagonist to perfection.

Portland Oregonian Stan Hall

Which leads to the question of whether Extract, clunky title aside, will finally give Judge a box-office hit. It looks and quacks like "Office Space," and previous satirical edges have been sanded down to something palatable to average filmgoers. On the other hand, it largely lacks the audacious elements that have given stuff like "The Hangover" an intense word-of-mouth following.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The movie is characterized by its crisp, cutting, classical framing, and comic timing. The style and approach recall classic Albert Brooks. Indeed, the beleaguered, cuckolded Joel would have been a great role for the young Brooks--adding a certain self-aggrandizing je ne sais quoi or a neurotic zetz that the appealing, but bland, Bateman lacks.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

From "Beavis and Butt-Head" to "King of the Hill" to "Office Space," Mike Judge has become our most dogged examiner of middle-American foolishness; no other comedy filmmaker more skillfully exploits that nagging sense that you’re surrounded by idiots.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

It’s a vivid indictment of the way in which we all stumble along, yet the film never musters full-throated chagrin at our dull complacency.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

With its immensely likable cast elevating the material, Judge extracts just enough ironic chuckles to rescue the movie from being written off as an assembly-line comedy.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Extract is no masterpiece, but it's considerably better than many 2009 films that have received a more robust backing.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Extract has some flavor, but the comedic kick is diluted by flat characters and a thin story.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Sort of entertaining, but lacks the focus and comic energy of Judge's "Office Space" (1999), and to believe that Suzie would be attracted to the gigolo requires not merely the suspension of disbelief, but its demolition.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Although never boring and almost continually amusing, Extract doesn't work as a movie because you don't buy a minute of it, even as silly satire.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A mix of coolheaded cultural satire and anxiety-inducing workplace and marital shenanigans, Extract is an odd project. It's smarter than most of the comedies out there right now, but that doesn't necessarily make it funnier.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The jokes in Extract play almost like afterthoughts, the last-second add-ons of a former animator who, until now, has always treated his flesh-and-blood characters a bit like cartoon caricatures and vice versa.

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

Extract, for all its surface reminders of Judge’s 1999 cult hit, "Office Space" (it’s set around a suburban bottling plant), shows its maker taking the smallest step toward lesser comic matters of infidelity and bong abuse. It feels slightly beneath him. That’s not to say you should skip it.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The entire cast, in fact, seems to be having fun, with Affleck and Koechner cheerfully stealing each one of their scenes. And the jokes come often enough to leave us consistently amused and occasionally delighted.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Couldn't Mike Judge, with his acid wit, have come up with a better title for a suburban-schlub comedy than 
Extract?

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

All we have here are bits, so many, in fact, that Extract’ feels more like a collection of crumbs.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A larger discomfort with Extract is an ambivalent attitude about comedy and social class. Mocking an officious middle-manager is always fair game; ridiculing blue-collar workers who resent their mindless jobs just feels mean.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

While Extract is mildly amusing and a slice of a mostly working-class world that doesn't make it into comedy that much anymore, it's not completely convincing as a movie.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Easily the most disappointing movie of the summer, Extract is more significantly the biggest letdown of its esteemed creator’s career.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

What’s most striking about Extract, beyond the scarcity of jokes and absence of actual filmmaking, is its deep well of sourness, which at times borders on misanthropy.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Mr. Judge has done better...Here, by contrast, we're dealing with one-note characters, among them a sexy grifter (Mila Kunis) and a dim-witted gigolo (Dustin Milligan); situations that stretch all credibility; and jokes that are never more than sort of funny.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Not a single person in this ensemble comedy doesn't suffer from colossal stupidity.

Variety Justin Chang

The picture's attempts at comic portraiture feel sketchy at best, more or less assigning each character a single, belabored trait.

Washington Post Dan Zak

May be the most disappointing American comedy of the decade, partly because it's jokeless and joyless but mostly because it squanders an all-star cast of superb comic talent.