Pun Salad

The great Mike Judge wrote and directed. It boasts Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, and J.K. Simmons in major roles. It's fine, but I wanted it to be better. Don't get me wrong, it's hilarious in spots. Office Space is such a high bar to clear.

Jason Bateman plays Joel Reynolds, the owner of a small plant that makes flavorings, hence the title. It's an unglamorous job, but he has hopes of selling out to a big company. His wife (Ms. Wiig) is shutting down on the passion front at home. He drowns his sorrows at the local sports bar, where he gets uniformly bad advice from his bartender buddy, Dean (Ben Affleck). Also, drugs, which makes him more likely to take the bad advice.

Meanwhile, Joel's hired Cindy, a beautiful grifter (Ms. Kunis) to work on the factory floor. Also a freak slapstick accident has put one of the workers in the hospital with damage to the, um, nut area.

So there's a lot going on, and it kept me chuckling the whole way through. Characters in Mike Judge movies tend to occupy the range from "not very smart" to "very, very dumb." The exception here is Ms. Kunis's character, who's pretty sharp, but extremely dishonest.

Here's what bothered me: Joel's company is called "Reynold's Extracts". What's that apostrophe doing there?