In 1999 the cartoonist Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, directed Office Space, his first live-action feature film. It was an inspired, often brilliantly funny satirical evisceration of modern white-collar life.
Little publicised, Office Space did badly at the box office. But it soon became a cult hit on DVD as millions of viewers recognided their own battles with boredom, bullying and bureaucracy and enjoyed Judge's fantasy of revenge against the machine. The film felt revolutionary - back in the late '90s, the real world of office work was rarely depicted on films or television, as if the drudgery, and the bogus collegiality of so much American business life was not seen as a fit subject for the screen.
Since then we have, of course, had The Office, and various reality TV shows set in real workplaces, but Office Space remains a classic.
Judge went on to make a second feature called Idiocracy. It too was a satire, starring Luke Wilson as an average guy who hibernates for 500 years and wakes up a relative genius in dystopic future in which mankind has become irredeemably stupid. Misanthropic and uneven, it did not even get a general release, though it too has become a cult hit on DVD.
Judge's latest film has had proper publicity and a proper release. It stars Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis (again), the wonderful J K Simmons (best known for his roles in Oz and Spider-Man), rocker Gene Simmons (playing a sleazy lawyer) and Ben Affleck.
Batemen, channeling Jack Lemmon, plays Joel Reynolds, a decent but frustrated, and slightly nerdy Everyman who has set up a company making chemically-flavoured soft drinks. He would like to sell the company to a big corporation, but an industrial accident caused by one of his less professional employees, and the resulting lawsuit, puts the sale in jeopardy.
Things are made worse by the arrival on the factory floor of Kunis's Cyndy, a gorgeous con-artist who catches Reynold's eye. It is a long time since Reynolds has had sex with his graphic designer wife Suzie (Kristin Wiig), but he feels unable to betray her - unless she betrays him first. This becomes a possibility when Reynolds's bartender, drug-dealing pal Affleck persuades him to hire the world's dumbest gigolo to seduce Suzie.
Largely set in the small Reynolds factory, Extract, like its predecessors, includes some daring and politically incorrect social satire, and, this time, Judge is at least as keen to make fun of working-class employees as of middle-class management.
The film is deadly accurate in its depiction of the way people skive off work, blame others for their mistakes and dream of suing their employers for millions. It is unafraid to confront class and ethnic stereotypes in ways you never see in American films or TV shows. It is also clearly aimed at grown-ups rather than teenagers in a way that few knockabout comedies are these days.
However, it is damaged by a strange sourness, as if Judge's misanthropy has curdled into contempt and cruelty. In particular it is hard to imagine anyone finding hilarious its bad taste subplot about a worker who loses his testicles to a flying piece of machinery. But in general there is something a little too nasty about the whole project, as if it is the creation of an artist overwhelmed by disillusionment and bitterness. It is a shame because Extract features Ben Affleck's best performance ever. Under Judge's direction he reveals comic talent that has been almost completely untapped until now.