FILMS: Swayze more than a two-hit wonder Sep 15, 2009
In his feature debut, how did director land a cast that included Jake and , , and Holmes Osborne as Donnie's parents, Drew Barrymore, and Beth Grant. Swayze's casting may have been the most ticklish, playing the self-help phony pushed on the town and school board, until his audience-pleasing secret comes out. (USA Today)
Stalking Steve Sep 11, 2009
Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman play Mary s loving parents, and Keith David is the frustrated boss of Steve and Hartman to round out the cast. The movie is directed by Phil Traill, a well-known television director in England, and written by Kim Barker, who wrote the Robin Williams film License To Wed (2007), which tanked. (Santa Maria Times)
Review: 'Extract' Tastes Too Bland Sep 8, 2009
-- Mary (Beth Grant), an assembly-line worker who complains in a nasally twang about everyone else slacking, even though she's probably the least productive employee of all. As the person responsible for overseeing all these idiots and incompetents, Bateman functions in his patented exasperated everyman mode, similar to his Michael Bluth character on "Arrested Development," only without the smart, surreal dialogue. (KERO 23, CA)
Review: 'All About Steve' Has All But Laughs Sep 7, 2009
She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. The film affords her no sympathy for any of these traits. (KERO 23, CA)
'Extract' not Judge's finest work Sep 5, 2009
She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. When she finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper, all blue eyes and blinding teeth), she. (Fresno Bee)
Actress Bullock takes 'Steve' in stride Sep 5, 2009
She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man ... She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. (Fresno Bee)
‘Extract’ a few flavors shy of screwball Sep 4, 2009
That moment is a bit in a movie choking on bits - including a few good ones with Beth Grant as the battiest of all the worker bees, Ben Affleck as a bartender with a curly wig, and a dim J.K. Simmons with no wig at all. All we have here are bits, so many, in fact, that Extract feels more like a collection of crumbs. (Boston Globe)
A 5-letter word to describe 'All About Steve'? Awful Sep 4, 2009
Her parents (Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant) set Mary up on a blind date. Her gentleman caller turns out to be hunky TV news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper). (USA Today -- Life)
Capsule Reviews: `Extract' and Others Sep 4, 2009
She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. When she finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper, all blue eyes and blinding teeth), she immediately throws herself at him. (Newsmax)
Just how bad can a romantic comedy be? Sep 4, 2009
When her parents (played by Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant) fix her up on a blind date, she's expecting the guy to be a dud. He turns out to be a handsome, polite cameraman (Bradley Cooper) who works for a CNN-type television network. (Salon)
Mike Judge's triumphant return to the office Sep 4, 2009
And one of the floor workers, a gossipy, pinched-looking woman named Mary (Beth Grant), continually complains that no one else in the plant ever does any work; she makes these pronouncements while standing around with her hands on her hips, as her own responsibilities drift by on the conveyor belt before her. When her purse is stolen -- and this is after our grifter friend Cindy appears on the scene -- she points her bony finger at one of the dutiful, silent Mexican workers Joel employs. (Salon)
Extract has flavor but no substance Sep 3, 2009
The cast is uniformly terrific Bateman plays drug scenes for comedy better than anyone in Finding Woodstock, and even second bananas like the hilarious Beth Grant (as a factory gossip) and Dustin Milligan (as an extremely dopey man-whore) wring laughs out of their brief screen time. In the end, Extract feels like a collection of note cards from the bulletin board of a gag writer who has no idea how to structure a plot. (MSNBC -- Movies)
REVIEW: Globe's 'Cornelia' an '80s-style soap opera May 29, 2009
The overlong play sweeps over the seven years of George and Cornelia's fraught marriage, but the writer Olsen wisely introduces just three other characters: Cornelia's crazy alcoholic mother, Ruby Folsom, played truly larger than life and always entertainingly by Beth Grant; George's campaign-manager brother (and Cornelia's nemesis) Gerald, played in an energetically servile yet serpentine way by T. Ryder Smith; and Gerald's wife, a starchy, underwritten role handled well enough by Hollis... (North County Times)
