Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Joel Reynolds (Jason Bateman) is sitting pretty with a beautiful wife, a comfortable home, and the almost finalized acquisition by General Mills of the culinary extracts business he has built with his loyal lieutenant Brian (J.K. Simmons). Joel seems to have it all, but his wife isn't interested in him, his employees want a big payoff, and the new office hottie (Mila Kunis) is really a con artist with ulterior motives.

If you've seen the trailers for Extract and laughed, you've seen the best parts of the film and have no reason to waste 92 minutes of your life. The cast does a decent job with the material, but writer/director Mike Judge doesn't capture lighting in a bottle a second time with the carbon copy of his cult classic Office Space.

One result of a bland script is I tend to pay more attention to the technical details and the 1080p AVC encode is a middling effort from Miramax. Black levels are elevated, contrast is all over the map, and actors look like they've spent a week in the fake-n-bake. Resolution is suspect with muddied backgrounds and the foregrounds aren't very impressive either. To add insult to injury, there's some slight edge enhancement and some problematic video noise.

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is a slight improvement over the video encode, but not much. The sound design lacks creativity and depth, especially in the bottling plant that is much quieter than it should be (I've been in quite a few) and general ambience is deficient in the front-heavy track. Dialog is mostly intelligible and dynamics are adequate—thanks to the film's score—but like the screenplay, there isn't much to get excited about.

Supplements include a behind-the-scenes featurette (HD), five extended scenes (SD), and one deleted scene (SD).

Is a comedy still considered a comedy if the audience doesn't laugh? Maybe I'm being a little harsh, because I did laugh once or twice, but I doubt this stinker will garner a cult following on home video like Office Space. Skip it.

Release Date: December 22, 2009
Studio: Miramax

Movie: 4/10
Picture: 5/10
Sound: 6/10

Review System

Source
Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player

Display
JVC DLA-RS1 projector
Stewart FireHawk screen (76.5" wide, 16:9)

Electronics
Onkyo Pro PR-SC885 pre/pro
Anthem PVA-7 power amplifier
Belkin PF60 power conditioner

Speakers
M&K S-150s (L, C, R)
M&K SS-150s (LS, RS, SBL, SBR)
SVS PC-Ultra subwoofer

Cables
Monoprice HDMI cables (source to pre/pro)
Best Deal analog-audio cables
PureLink HDC Fiber Optic HDMI Cable System (15 meters) from pre/pro to projector

Acoustical treatments from GIK Acoustics