Mike Judge can’t seem to get any respect. Office Space eventually found its audience on DVD (after flopping hard in theaters), but his follow-up, Idiocracy (which, by the way, was brilliant – go see it now) barely even received a theatrical release before being shoveled into Blockbusters everywhere. He’s had a bit more luck on TV, with the long-running Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill series, but — seriously — do you know anyone who will admit to watching either one of them? (His latest, The Goode Family, aired on ABC this summer, and was both his most “mainstream”-oriented and also his best; not surprisingly, ABC cancelled it as soon as it was out of the gate.) With an all-star cast and no serious competition at the box-office, his latest film — Extract – is in an ideal position to change this; unfortunately, it’s just not very good.

Jason Bateman of Arrested Development stars as Joel, the owner of a company that produces (wait for it…) various extracts for cooking use — vanilla, almond, mint, etc. — and is in contact with General Mills regarding a possible buyout. When a worker on the line (Clifton Collins, Jr., Star Trek) loses a testicle, he stands to potentially get a huge cash settlement out of the company, which stands to leave Joel bankrupt and also attracts the interest of a peripatetic grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis, That 70’s Show). Meanwhile, Joel has to break up an affair between his wife (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live) and an overzealous gigolo who is happy to work for free (Dustin Milligan, 90210).

Can anyone tell me why forklift pallets are always painted blue?

If it sounds bloated and aimless, congratulations, you win the prize. Judge is really making two different movies here — one is a heist picture and one is the story of a man rebuilding his marriage — and he never really manages to integrate them in any meaningful way. Extract feels like a lengthy episode of a sitcom: it tells two simultaneous stories, and they occasionally overlap, but they never really manage to intertwine — and, in true sitcom fashion, everything goes back to normal at the end. If he had chosen a single story and focused on it, Extract might have been a madcap farce or a unique rom-com; as it is, it’s just bland and lifeless.

It should surprise no one that the movie never really develops anything in the way of thrust. It just kind of shambles along, taking the characters from one incident to the next, never really getting to the point, or even knowing what the point is. Many of the roles feel miscast (Wiig is one of the funniest things about SNL, but here she’s stuck in a dull, “straight” role; Ben Affleck shows up, but never does anything funny), most of the sequences are pointless (jokes about pot smoking and racism that are ten years too late to be relevant, anyone?) and the visuals are uninspired (which is particularly frustrating, knowing that this same man was responsible for the fascinating dystopian landscapes of Idiocracy).

In some ways, the whole thing feels like a less-funny rehash of Office Space – the workplace drama, the focus on altered states of consciousness, the forced moments of truth, and the implicit misogyny are all present. Whereas Office Space was ultimately sympathetic to its white-collar team, however, Extract comes off as holding its blue-collar workers in considerable contempt. Jokes about how all poor white people are racists and never clean their houses seem downright mean-spirited, particularly since we know that the creator of King of the Hill can be sympathetic to America’s working class when he chooses to do so. This is indicative of the fundamental problem, though: when a comedy confuses ugly stereotypes with genuine humor, you can bet that — whatever else you may say about it — it’s a lazily made film. Extract feels like a slapped-together pilot for a sitcom that would presumably get dumped into some lonely Tuesday night slot — if it made it into production at all.