(out of 5)(out of 5)
The characters in Office Space are all slowly having their souls destroyed by the systems in which they operate. Peter Gibbons (Swingers' Ron Livingston) is a young computer engineer who works at a corporation known as Initech. At one point in the movie we learn that his job is to update bank software for the Y2K bug, a mind-numbingly meaningless existence if you ask him.
Peter's friends and co-workers, Samir and Michael Bolton (not the pop singer) share his dismay. They are under-appreciated software engineers, working five years without a raise or a promotion. They sit in office cubicles all day, Peter has to endure the high-pitched, eternally cheery voice of the phone operator in the cubicle near his, repeating, "Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking. Just a moment." Also in another cubicle near Peter's is the mumbling, paranoid Milton, who frets about having his desk moved yet again, or that they might take away his stapler. Writer/director Judge, creator of "Beavis and Butthead" and co-creator of "King of the Hill" does some good work dealing with live actors for a change, although each character is not much more than a cartoon character. And that's not such a bad thing here. After all, that's where much of the comedy is derived in the film. Milton was originally a cartoon character in an SNL sketch also created by Judge. He is played here by an unrecognizable Stephen Root ("Newsradio's" Jimmy James). Judge seems to have some fun at singer Michael Bolton's expense as when the character in the film is constantly bothered by people asking if he's related to the pop singer. When Peter asks why he doesn't change his name or go by Mike, he responds, "Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks!"
Peter visits a hypnotherapist, to whom he laments, "Each single day has been worse than the day before so that every day you see me is the worst day of my life." After being placed under hypnosis, Peter comes to realize that he wants to see how far he can go before they fire him. For starters he skips work, comes in late, guts a fish on his desk, and knocks down one of his cubicle walls.
When Peter leaves the office, we learn that office workers are not the only ones who have bad jobs. He is in love with the waitress at a local restaurant played by Jennifer Aniston. She too can't stand her job. Her boss confronts her for not having enough pieces of "flair," an industry term used to describe items such as buttons that they are supposed to wear on their uniforms. She only has the minimum 15, and what can you say about someone who only does the bare minimum?
It's not enough of a movie for some guys to complain about their terrible jobs. So in come the efficiency experts, Bob and Bob, who evaluate everyone's performance in order to decide who they can lay off. Peter tells them that he does only 15 minutes of actual work each week. He says it's ridiculous that he has eight bosses so that when he makes one mistake, he has to hear about it eight times. This is apparently a problem with modern management theories and practices.
The Bobs believe that Peter is upper-management material, he's an independent thinker. However, they decide to fire Samir and Michael. This leads the three guys to create a virus that will rip off the company for a few million over the next two years. It's not an original idea, but the movie knows it. Michael says it was done in the "underrated" Superman III.
There is a great scene in which they use a baseball bat to take out their built up frustrations on the copy machine that has given them hell through the whole film. It makes perfect sense, they have to take whatever they can get, to have that little bit of happiness as the bane of their existence is symbolically destroyed Office Space is about the ways in which corporations use people and try to get as much product for as little cost as possible. The workers are not needed as individuals, only as automatons who will do what they're asked without complaining, so long as they get a private little cubicle, an hour for lunch and a copy machine that works.
Copyright © 1999 Jason Ihle. All rights reserved.