Meet Joel (Jason Bateman). Joel owns an extract factory. Joel bottles ambrosial concentrates of vanilla, almonds, cherries and s'mores. At work each day, Joel juggles the demands of a small-business owner, dealing with stalled assembly lines, quirky workers and a plant manager (J.K. Simmons) who calls almost all of them 'dinkus.' At home, Joel's wife (Kristen Wiig) dons sweatpants after 8 p.m. Once she cinches those babies, that's it -- no sex, no way, nuh-uh. Joel's nightly commute home is a race against the clock, fueled by hormones and complicated by a prattling neighbor (David Koechner) who drones on and on about a Rotary Club dinner. Things couldn't get much worse, right? Which means they're about to. And so they do -- when a couple of old birds at work delay the line, piling up extract bottles and sparking a freak accident that fells a co-worker (Clifton Collins Jr.), or at least one significant part of him. Sooner after, a steamy new temp (Mila Kunis) materializes at work. Joel doesn't realize she's both a drifter and a grifter, so he has no cause to suspect her flirty queries about the extract biz. And he's a sucker for it, because he just keeps missing that '8 o'clock sweat-pant deadline.' Written and directed by 'Beavis and Butt-head' creator Mike Judge, 'Extract' has a bit more sentimental bounce to it than his last stab at workplace comedy, 1999's slacker-praise song 'Office Space' -- now beloved by printer-smashing cubicle drones across America. Joel's problem isn't so much professional ennui as a mounting accretion of oddballs: every day, in every way, his life is derailed by eccentrics. Judge wisely exploits Bateman's gift for pickled reaction shots (see 'Arrested Development'), playing his star's everyguy exasperation off a colorful supporting cast. There are some priceless character turns: Matt Schulze as an explosive pot dealer; Ben Affleck, looser and woolier than usual, as a bartender who offers dubious advice along with chancy pharmaceuticals; '90210''s Dustin Milligan as a halfwit gigolo with rosebud lips and a confused pair of eyebrows; T.J. Miller as an emphatically good-natured grindcore frontman. In addition, Gene Simmons (yup, that Gene Simmons) portrays a scuzzball lawyer with disquieting hair, though I'm not sure that last bit is acting. The weak links here are Kunis's uninteresting scam artist she's hot but flat, like Florida -- and her share of the script, which unfolds in rote fashion until the expected conclusion. The ending is heavier on harmony than irony, but that's none too shocking in a film that scores big laughs off a pitiably earnest hooker. (Or, as Wiig's character describes him: 'Stupid Brad. Stupid, dumb, dumb Brad.') Extract isn't an instant classic, but it bumps along agreeably, its humor culled from serial bad decisions, mock-romantic discontent ('Nobody cares about extracts!') and lots of spirited overacting ripe with good intentions. Bateman plays the straight man with the tact of a frazzled yuppie, a crispness in his chinos and his bearing. While Joel puts the extract in bottles, Bateman puts the starchy charm in Joel. amy.biancolli@chron.com XXXXXXXXX EXTRACT THREE STARS OUT OF FOUR Rated: R for language, sexual references and some drug use. Running time: 91 minutes 