This is the new film by Mike Judge who previously made Beavis and Butthead and Office Space, among other things. This has been widely praised as a hilarious, smart comedy and some sort of logical follow-up to Office Space. I don't think it is any of these things. I think it's boring and dumb and sophomoric in a dull way.
The movie has Jason Bateman as the owner of a company that makes chemical flavor extracts. He bitches all the time to his best friend Ben Affleck that his wife, Kristen Wiig, isn't interested in sex with him. At some point a young con artist, Mila Kunis, starts working for his company as part of an elaborate long con where she seduces a man who was injured at work (when he lost a testicle - get it! get it! that's funny!) and convinces him to sue the company so she can rob him of the settlement money. Batement, who is interested in having an affair with Kunis, hires a gigolo to sleep with his wife so he can feel less guilty about the infidelity.
My biggest problem with this is that I didn't find it funny. I might have laughed once or twice. One repeating joke had Bateman's neighbor constantly coming up to his car as he was rushing to get home and not giving up speaking to him. This happened about six times and was never funny. J.K. Simmons (who I normally like) had a totally flat role whose only purpose was to constantly not remember names of the employees of the extract company - this was also not funny. I think most of the humor is banal and easy and not very memorable and funny.
On top of this, the story was totally unnecessarily complicated and layered. For a 91 minute movie, there was no need for there to be four major plot lines. Part of what was so fresh and easy about Office Space is the simplicity of the story. This had none of that and got buried underneath the sidetrack stories.
The acting is fine. Bateman has become an honest and funny fratboy actor and is fine enough in the role. I absolutely don't understand the appeal of Mila Kunis who is OK as an actor and as a beauty, but nothing special. Ben Affleck is funny enough as a dull bartender druggie, but it seemed that he was there simply to have a funny, dirty haircut onscreen. Whatever - I think none of these actors had much to work with script-wise and they all did as well as they could have done.
I'm not a big fan of this movie and I don't understand the appeal.
Stars: 1 of 4
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OMG, i hate you! YOU'RE boring and dull and sophomoric in a dull way!!!!!!! OK, just kidding, but I did enjoy this movie quite a bit and DO think it's a worthy follow-up to Office Space (as opposed to Judge's last movie, the godawful Idiocracy). I like Jason Bateman a lot and he's very good at this droll, dry humor. Ben Affleck is hilarious as his bartender buddy always peddling drugs. I laughed a lot and know I'll laugh even more on a second viewing, because a lot of the jokes are slow-burners or slip by so quickly they don't quite register the first time. Like Office Space, this is very repeatable and inherently sweet, which is not true for most gross-out comedies, snary comedies, bromance comedies and most other comedic genres.
ReplyDeleteMeh.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the whole thing with JK Simmons not knowing the names of the employees? That wasn't funny at all. And what was with the poolboy? That was also not even close to funny.