King of the Hill creator Mike Judge’s 2009 comedy featuring Ben Affleck was forgotten soon after release, but the 16-year-old movie has now become a streaming hit in the US. Judge’s animated 1990s MTV show Beavis and ʙuтт-Head offered a less-subtle form of humor than the creator’s later live-action Affleck collaboration, but it certainly made more of a lasting impression, getting a reboot in 2022.
The original success of Judge’s giggling, music-video-mocking slackers led to his big network breakthrough, the animated FOX comedy King of the Hill, which itself opened the door for him to embark upon a movie career. 1999’s Office Space went on to be a cult classic, while Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy has become a cultural touchstone, thanks to its uncannily prophetic depiction of a future society slowly sinking into a mire of environmental destruction, runaway consumerism, anti-intellectualism, and general apathy.
Mike Judge’s Extract Lands In Paramount+’s Top 3 In The United States
The Idiocracy Follow-Up Barely Made An Impression In 2009
Judge’s forgotten follow-up to Idiocracy was a movie called Extract, a workplace comedy starring Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis that’s seeing belated success, as it’s now rising up the charts on Paramount+. The newly-christened streaming hit made just $10.8 million when it was released in 2009, on a budget of $8 million. 62% of reviews for Extract are positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, making it a modest critical success.
Judge has not directed a live-action film since 2009’s Extract.
But the neglected Extract appears to be undergoing a rediscovery via streaming, as the movie has recently been hanging out in the top 3 on the Paramount+ charts, peaking at #2 (via Flixpatrol). The recent release Novocaine has been holding down the top spot during the same span, blocking Judge’s 2009 movie from hitting #1.
Our Take On Extract’s Streaming Success
The Comedy Is Worthy Of Rediscovery (And A New тιтle)
Extract director Judge’s humor is often not accessible to wide audiences, and sometimes even flies over the heads of critics, who occasionally dismiss his projects as vulgar and unintelligent. Beavis and ʙuтт-Head was derided in its time, but is now seen as a brilliant exercise in blunt cultural critique. Judge’s movies Office Space and Idiocracy both made little impression at the box office upon release, but both grew in stature over time, and are now enshrined among the best comedies of recent decades.
Judge’s 2009 Idiocracy follow-up serves as a companion piece to Office Space, delving again into the workspace, but this time looking at things from the perspective of ownership. Having the owner of a company be the main character perhaps left Extract feeling unrelatable, especially compared to Office Space, which focused on software workers weary of their boring jobs. Also, the тιтle Extract is a little head-scratching and odd, a possible deterrent to theatergoers giving it a chance.
Paramount+ subscribers seem to have found something in Extract that wasn’t noticed in 2009. Perhaps the cultural climate has changed enough in the last 16 years for Judge’s satire to attain more pungency. Bateman’s jerky boss character did little to amuse or outrage audiences when Extract was released, but maybe today there is more appeтιтe for satire that takes on the ownership class, even if the owner in question is cast in a somewhat sympathetic light. Maybe the movie being easily accessible on streaming makes its terrible тιтle less of a turn-off.
Source: Flixpatrol
