Austin Adult Entertainment: Latest from Judge mediocre, I’ll tell you what
Judge simply leans too far toward the absurd this time. There probably is a sex-starved extract plant owner like Joel (Jason Bateman) out there, but neither you nor I know him. Same for the gigolo (Dustin Milligan) hired to seduce Joels wife. The appeal of Judges previous work comes from the familiarity of the situations and characters, and believability is what Extract lacks. One ridiculous development would have seemed realistic, but when industrial accidents, prostitution and con artists combine, colloquial charm is traded in for more conventional, randomized laughs. The logic seems to be that if enough darts are thrown at someones funny bone, one will stick; that clashes with the way problems hit an everyday life. Granted, there are the truly terrible days where calamities pile up, but problems usually come one at a time, taking up all a persons attention. Extract should have similarly focused on one problem, as Office Space did. That film was basically an elongated sitcom episode, a style that suits Judges writing and would have suited the running time of Extract, which clocks in at 91 minutes.