Extract

Sometimes you’re willing to give a comedy the benefit of the doubt. If you laugh, that’s enough. But a good movie can connect that comedy to how we live in the world. Or it takes risks and demonstrates a real sensibility. Mike Judge usually gets most of the way there. His animated television shows - “Beavis and Butt-Head’’ and “King of the Hill’’ are two - found perverse comic life in Middle American monotony. Characters stagnated on the sofa in front of the television or yammered around a grill in somebody’s backyard. Those shows bespoke an America where the suburban normal absorbed the weird the way a paper towel accommodates a spill. Like the folks over at “The Simpsons,’’ Judge is a comedian who can find the poetic glories in stupidity.