Overall Rating
  Awesome: 62.63%
Worth A Look: 20%
Average: 6.84%
Pretty Bad: 6.32%
Total Crap: 4.21%
7 reviews, 148 user ratings
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| Office Space |
by Brian McKay
"Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!"
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If you've ever worked in a cubicle, and hated your job, then you have probably either quoted a line from this film, or heard it quoted by one of your coworkers. This little gem from Mike Judge is more than comedy, more than satire - it is an anthem for the downtrodden cube-borgs everywhere, who have had the life and soul stomped out of them by an uncaring corporate entity. It's a ray of hope for everyone who's given a hundred percent to their work, only to be tossed out on their asses during the first hint of recession so that some top-floor executive ass-clown can keep driving a Porsche, banging his secretary, and expensing out $200 lunches at strip clubs. Sure, I've been laid off a time or two (or five), but I'm not bitter!Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is a man whose soul has been sucked away by the life of a cube maze rat. His dream is to do nothing. His only motivation for being productive at all is so that none of his eight bosses will hassle him. He suspects his girlfriend is cheating on him, and every day of his life is getting progressively worse.
When his girlfriend suggests hypnotherapy, he decides to give it a go in the hopes that the doctor can brainwash him into believing that he is off fishing when he is at work, or something along those lines. The doctor places him into a deep hypnotic state, where all his work-related cares slip away. Only problem is, the doctor keels over from a heart attack before he can bring Peter out of it.
When he wakes up the following day, he realizes that he's had enough. He still hates his job, but he's not worried anymore. He's not going to quit, however. He's just going to show up whenever and do what he wants, until they finally get around to firing him. What he doesn't count on is a pair of efficiency experts who think he's a "straight shooter" with management potential. This perturbs his boss, Lumbergh (Cary Cole), a monotone exec with a masochistic bent, doing all in his power to make life for his people as uncomfortable as possible.
Peter finds out that his two best friends are about to get shitcanned, so he comes up with a surefire plan to embezzle from the company with a computer virus, one that ends up working just a little too well. In the meantime, having been dumped by his girlfriend, he hooks up with waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), who also hates her job and finds a kindred soul in Peter because he loves watching late-night cable kung-fu flicks as much as she does.
Although the hostile nature of the office environment is exaggerated here, it is solidly grounded in truth. Talk to anyone who's ever worked in any kind of call center or other partitioned nightmare, and ask them how sore their asshole is from the corporate cornholing they recieved. Most large companies have made it plain that they just don't care about their people. They only care about numbers, but aren't willing to treat their employees right or offer them any motivation (besides a meager paycheck) to get those numbers. And they wonder why they have a 1000 percent turnover rate.
Peter Gibbons is a hero for the everyman (and the character was obviously stolen for Spacey's role in "American Beauty"). Ron Livingston has the good looks and easygoing charm to bring genuine leading-man charisma to the role. The supporting cast keeps the laughter consistent, from Gary Cole and John McGinley as the evil executives, to Ajay Naidur and David Herman as Peter's friends and coworkers who reluctantly agree to get involved in his embezzlement scheme. The fact that the actions of these three geeky white boys is punctuated with Tarantino-esque slow-mo or freeze-frame shots and a pounding gangsta rap soundtrack, only makes scenes like the brutal murder of a stolen office printer that much more hilarious. Hell, even Jennifer Aniston manages to be cute and fairly non-annoying in this film, and that's saying a lot.True, this is not the greatest comedy ever made, nor is it the most biting and effective piece of satire to ever grace the big screen. But no other film in recent memory has so ingrained itself into the consciousness of the working lower-middle class (or is it upper-lower class? I think an Old Navy employee makes more than a Level 2 tech support agent these days). "Office Space" lets us vicariously enjoy all the things we'd like to do at work, right before we give it the finger and walk out.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1205&reviewer=258
originally posted: 04/07/02 21:11:09
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SNL Movies: For more in the SNL Movies series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival For more in the 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
19-Feb-1999 (R)
DVD: 01-Nov-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
15-Apr-1999 (M)
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