Saturday, September 12, 2009

Extract

I saw Extract on the same day I saw Gamer, so that means I was 0 for 2. Extract was the better of the two, but still left a bitter taste in my mouth. Hyped as being brought to us by the creators of Office Space, Extract tricked me with the old bait n’ switch. I thought it would be hilarious, especially when I saw Jason Bateman cough out that huge bong rip in the trailer. The movie had its moments, but overall it didn’t amount to much more than a few chuckles.

The setting is an extract factory owned by Bateman’s character Joel, a regular hard-working guy who has all the trappings of the American Dream but is stuck in a dull, sexless marriage. When a scheming new temp with a checkered past named Cindy (Mila Kunis) begins working at the plant, Joel’s eye begins to wander. His stoner buddy Dean (Ben Affleck) encourages him to make the most of this potential new opportunity. Joel’s a good guy, so Dean devises a plan to get his wife Suzie to cheat first, thereby giving Joel a “free pass.” The scheme is pretty funny, but its execution becomes a little silly. Meanwhile, Joel’s attempt to seal the deal with Cindy never quite comes to fruition, at least not the way he intended. Most of the action takes place at the extract plant, which employs an array of funny characters, including a gossiping busy-body and an incompetent rocker. Creator Mike Judge (King of the Hill) is adept at playing the mundane workplace atmosphere for giggles, but the movie loses its way by making Joel such a bland character. He’s a pretty weak guy who behaves inexplicably. When he finds out his wife has cheated on him he’s angry but he never displays the rage, shock, or disbelief her infidelity warrants. I just didn’t get it. The movie’s plot centers on whether or not Joel will sell the plant, but most of the movie deals with the interpersonal relationships between him and his wife, Dean, and his employees at the plant. Mila Kunis is appealing as the object of everyone’s desire, but she behaves almost as inexplicably as Joel. A con-artist, she begins working at the plant to weasel her way into the life of Step, an employee who was injured in a hilarious freak accident on the job and stands to profit handsomely. With dollar signs in her eyes, she “accidentally” bumps into Step at the grocery store and begins her efforts to become his girlfriend and set up a big score through a lawsuit. Step would rather settle amicably out of court, but Cindy encourages him to milk the accident for all it’s worth. The potential lawsuit threatens to derail Joel’s plans to sell the plant, unless he can get to the bottom of Step’s recent change of heart.

Affleck was funny as Joel’s douchebag sidekick, but Extract’s occasional laughs aren’t enough for me to endorse it. It seems like writers think it’s okay to sacrifice plot and good storytelling just because the movie is a comedy. Joel needed more of a backbone, and a lot of his actions didn’t make sense. Not bad for a few laughs, but Extract never quite reaches its full potential. I’d wait for Netflix.

Gamer

I would like my $8.50 and 95 minutes back. Despite its intriguing premise and provocative plot, Gamer fell short of expectations. The potential existed for a thought-provoking exploration of the darker side of human nature; instead I witnessed a hedonistic exercise in depravity.

Gamer
takes place in the not-so-distant future, in a world where consumers can take gaming to the next level. Are you familiar with The Sims, a game that allows you to manipulate characters’ lives and create your own society? Well, imagine if that were real. Imagine if you were playing a video game whose characters represented actual human beings. Sounds pretty cool, right? Not so much. Once the movie delved deeper into its premise it exposed an underbelly of humanity that I’d rather not see. Gerard Butler (300, The Ugly Truth) stars as Kable, a prisoner who is forced to compete in a real-life video game called “Slayers.” He is being controlled by a teen named Simon, a rich kid with every expensive toy imaginable at his fingertips. The object of Slayers is to shoot your way of each battle zone and to survive 30 such battles so that you can be released from prison. Obviously no one would do this shit willingly, but the prisoners don’t have much choice. They have been implanted with a microchip of some sort called a nanex, which ensures their compliance. The creator of Slayers, and another Sims-like game called “Society,” is a nefarious Bill Gates-type named Ken Castle, played by Michael Hall of Dexter. Castle is ridiculously rich, profiting from the public’s desire to manipulate real human lives. His game Society allows you to make real people have sex, fight, use drugs – you name it. You get paid for participating in the game as a character, and you have to pay to play. Kable has become a cult hero, a global superstar, because he is only three battles away from being the first character to survive Slayers. He has won 27 battles. Most prisoners don’t win more than 10. Simon, his player, has also gained a high level of notoriety. He is the one controlling Kable, after all. Things go awry when an organized human resistance rises up against Castle, who has larger designs on taking over the minds of regular human beings instead of just the prisoners in his game. Ludacris is the leader of the resistance, an organization called Humanz. Anyway, they hack into the Slayers game and allow Simon and Kable to communicate directly. They also tell Kable that Castle has a secret to keep and will never allow Kable to survive the game the old-fashioned way; he’ll have to escape. First he has to be released from Simon’s control. Kable persuades Simon to release him and begins his escape. Back in the real world he has a wife and daughter waiting for him. First he has to get past another prisoner inserted in the game to kill him. *sigh*

The details are non-sensical and the plot becomes more and more ridiculous. I know that most movies require suspension of belief, but Gamer became over the top. Now that I know it was written and directed by the duo that brought us Crank, I understand the high level of absurdity. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor obviously like the idea of people behaving wildly violently and sexually without consequences. They don’t portray it thoughtfully or intelligently, they prefer it gratuitous and pointless. Violence for violence’s sake. I personally don’t enjoy that, which is why Gamer was just not my type of movie. A movie like Kill Bill was certainly violent, but it was done smartly. There’s a right way and wrong way to do it. Quite simply, Gamer was all wrong. I wanted to press the re-set button on this game, and I couldn’t get out of the theater fast enough. Gerard Butler ably portrayed Kable, but I found the material to be questionable. Gamer was a disgusting movie that offered nothing of value. The material was ripe for social and psychological commentary, but Neveldine and Taylor obviously had no such designs.


This article first appeared at http://poptimal.com/2009/09/gamer/ and was reprinted with permission.