THE MOVIE

Jason Bateman stars in Extract, on Blu-Ray now.

It wouldn't be a surprise if you haven't heard of Extract. The film never saw a theatrical release in Australia (as far as we can tell from our research), and in America it only managed a box office of $US10.8 million, only $2.8 million more then the production budget. That's somewhat surprising, and disappointing, for a couple of reasons. Firstly the movie has a fairly strong cast, secondly the writer and director Mike Judge is behind the movie Office Space, and finally this is actually a pretty entertaining movie.

Joel, the owner of an Extract plant, tries to contend with myriad personal and professional problems, such as his potentially unfaithful wife and employees who want to take advantage of him.

Mila Kunis is hot as Cindy in Extract.

Star of this movie is Jason Bateman, an actor who while generally likable can also be quite dry in his delivery and acting. That's the same in this movie where he show little emotion and little range in his tone, but still remains someone that you somehow get attached to during his presence on-screen. For me though, the person that steals this movie is Ben Affleck as the drug-crazed bar owner. Despite causing much of the trouble for Joel he is certainly a very likable character, performer superbly.

The supporting cast too are strong in their roles with the J.K. Simmons great as Joel's co-worker Brian while equally impressive performances are put in by actors including Kristen Wiig as Joel's wife Suzie, the very hot and likable Mila Kunis as love interest and trouble maker Cindy, Dustin Milligan as the male prostitute Brad, and Clifton Collins Jr. as the injured workers Step. We can honestly say there wasn't a single performance we didn't believe in, although we can't say we were overly fond of the two gossiping ladies on the production line.

Extract really is another very solid film from director Mike Judge. It's well paced, has some entertaining moments and while it doesn't have too many moments where you'll burst out laughing there's enough here to recommend this film.

Jason Bateman as Joel and Kristen Wiig as Suzie.

VIDEO
Extract is presented on Blu-Ray at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 using the AVC MPEG-4 codec and the picture is quite gorgeous indeed. While we found the colours to be a little reddish at times, the picture is very sharp, with good back levels and a natural film look. Being such a recent film the print is free of any real blemishes. Overall, while you won't use Extract as a reference quality disc, it is a Blu-Ray which won't disappoint.

AUDIO
The primary audio track on this Blu-Ray disc is a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track which is more then acceptable for this type of film. It's very dialogue focused and as such there isn't a great deal to get excited about with this film in terms of audio design. Still, the dialogue is always crystal clear and there is occasional use of the surrounds for some ambient effects. It's hard to fault the transfer here as any deficiencies and lack of excitement are more to do with the subject matter and source material rather then the transfer to Blu-Ray.

The disc also includes and Descriptive Audio track (Dolby Digital 2.0 at 224kbps) which is adequate, while manually searching through the audio tracks (its not in the menus strangely) shows up a Dolby Digital 2.0 track encoded at 640kbps which is pretty decent too. The single subtitle track is accurate to the dialogue on-screen and has been coloured for easy identification as to who is speaking.

Having a discussion about the extract business.

EXTRAS
So Extract wasn't the biggest movie release at the cinemas ever, but we were hoping for some extras. Here we have absolutely nothing which is a disappointment given the cast and director involved. Surely the director talking about a movie he co-wrote, and obviously loves, couldn't have been out of the question. How about a short sit-down interview?

OVERALL
Extract is a pretty entertaining movie which, while not providing gut-wrenching belly laughs, is quite entertaining and worth checking out.

Review By: Dave Warner

THE MOVIE	7/10
THE VIDEO	7/10
THE AUDIO	9/10
THE EXTRAS	0/10
OVERALL	7.5/10