—–

The first scene of ”Shark Night” tries to replicate the memorable “Jaws” opening. However, unlike that classic shark movie, “Shark Night” has the subtlety of a man hitting a board over your head. It completely lacks suspense and excitement. While “Jaws” was imaginative and exciting in its first scene, “Night” is underwhelming and tiresome.

As the story gets underway, a young woman named Sara (Sara Paxton) brings her friends to a lakeside home that she hasn’t visited in three years. The group of unremarkable friends settle in and decide to visit the nearby lake. Shortly thereafter, one of the characters is viciously attacked by a shark and soon enough, several of the friends are attacked by a group of super-powerful sharks.

Last year, “Piranha 3D” took a familiar concept and made it fun and refreshing. The story was full of cliches but the cast was fun to watch and the story was memorable. The cast in “Shark Night 3D” is so mediocre that “Dancing with the Stars” would reject them outright. Two of the main characters are played by Dustin Mulligan, who was booted off of the show “90210″ after one season, and Chris Carmack, who is known for creating an unremarkable character on “The O.C.” While “Piranha” offered up Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd and Steve McQueen’s grandson, “Shark Night” offers up a cast of easily-forgettable unknowns.

If the acting is bad, the script is even worse. After one of Sara’s friends is attacked and bleeding, one character turns to a medical student and says “You’re the only one who knows what to do,” swatting her eyes to encourage him to save the young man’s life. If that isn’t bad in itself, the injured character loses his arm but then decides to fight against one of the sharks himself. The bleeding one-armed man then proceeds to walk into the water hoping to entice the shark into battle.

If sharks only ate intelligent people, these characters would be safe wherever they swam.

It isn’t enough to say that “Shark Night” is a bad film. It’s an atrocious one. There are so many plot holes that it could be studied in film school for what not to do. When you think the movie has reached its worst moment, it reinvents itself and throws in a moral lesson about people that enjoy watching shark attacks. Oh, brother.

As with other films like this, the “heroes” always survive despite making stupid decisions. As the story nears its climax, one of the heroes jumps into the water to swim to a nearby boat. While other people get eaten within seconds of entering the water, this character can take a leisurely swim without being attacked at all. I know that the “good guys” will inevitably survive despite their stupidity but this movie brings that concept to a new low.

In a word, “Shark Night” bites.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics.

The clouds seem to finally part when General Mills makes an offer to buy Joel’s company. Eager to get out from under the thankless role of employer and escape the never-ending hassles his eccentric staff puts him through, “Sell!” Joel says, and then the mishap occurs. In what’s commonly known as an industrial accident, Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), loses a testicle and the sale of the company is put on hold due to all the unknowns surrounding a personal injury lawsuit.

Thankfully, Step has no desire to take advantage of the situation. All he really wants is a promotion to Floor Manager. Joel’s okay with that and once more the skies clear until the gorgeous, cunning, but still somewhat naive Cindy (Milas Kunis) arrives on the scene to complicate both the lawsuit and Joel’s love life. Having thus far coasted on her looks and made her way through life as a small-time con artist, Cindy sees the loss of a testicle as a shot at the big time.  

Batemen plays put upon about as well anyone out there, his Joel is no exception and he and the whole cast are the best part of a movie that has some fine pieces but never works as a whole. The plotting is choppy, the laughs sparse, and even for a somewhat off-center comedy, Joel’s actions – which turn most of the plot – strain credibility. My abiding affection for “Office Space” is well documented, and no one would argue that much beloved workplace comedy exemplifies tight plotting, but “Extract’s” whole reason for being is predicated on Joel’s inability to get home from work at 8pm and yet after this is firmly established, on at least three occasions, he up and leaves the office on a whim.

One can only suspend so much disbelief.

Judge’s insightful observational comedy is also lacking. “Office Space” (1999) nailed the subculture known as Planet Cubicle, and you didn’t have to live that life to appreciate how perfectly that world was captured. Here you never feel like you’re given the full tour of all the eccentric details that would make up the blue collar small business world of “Extract.” Bits and pieces work: Step’s empty machismo about being the fastest sorter, the tattooed fork-lift operator with the band, the bitter, territorial woman on the assembly line… Unfortunately, they serve only as a taste of what could have been.

Instead, the main focus is on one of those relationship comedies where the audience knows a simple conversation (or leaving work ten-minutes earlier) would solve everything, which in turn makes all the ensuing hilarity feel somewhat forced.

The luminous Kunis is sorely underused. Because the early focus (and the film’s advertising) is on her, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that her character’s primary function is to instigate the main story, not be a major participant in it. On the other hand, Affleck knocks his supporting role out of the park, Gene Simmons has a great time as a flamboyantly unscrupulous lawyer and in what could be a breakout role as the dumbest gigolo ever, Dustin Milligan is responsible for the film’s few memorable scenes.

One could argue the unfairness of comparing anything to “Office Space,” but that lightening in a bottle shared many of “Extract’s” plotting and structural problems. What swamped those flaws and made them irrelevant were endless streams of quotable dialogue and one iconic scene after another. “Extract” has some fine moments and will certainly play better on television than up on the big screen, but never gets off the ground. Removed from the shadow of what came before and placed in a vacuum, the result would not be a more entertaining movie just a less disappointing one.