Swapping the white collar of Office Space for the blue collar of a flavour- extract plant, Mike Judge is on broader, less satirical, but still solidly entertaining form. The ever-dependable Jason Bateman is the owner who has problems in the factory
(a lawsuit on the back of a freak testicle accident), the bedroom (wife Kristen Wiig is no longer putting out) and the driveway (dullard neighbour David Koechner accosts him at every turn), so seeks respite by pursuing sexy con chick Mila Kunis. It mines
a similar vein of hick humour to My Name Is Earl, but Judge never straitjackets the ramshackle plot into formula. Stretches of it are very funny (particularly an extended bong sequence), stretches of it are far less so (it feels less credible than some of Judge’s cartoon work — King Of The Hill, Beavis & Butt-Head et al), but Judge really feels for these losers, making this shaggy, unfocused fun.