Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Is somebody having a case of 'The Mondays'?
The premise of this film is very weak, that of a guy who finally sees the light and decides to "not go anymore" to his dead end job. The true merit of it lies in showing almost every possible office situation that can happen, while not really exaggerating them.Peter Gibbons (Livingston) works at Initech, a software company like thousands others, in a thankless job checking lines of code for the Y2K glitch. He's numb from all the stupid, meaningless work he and his co-workers, Michael Bolton (no, he's not related to the singer) and Samir Nagheenanajar ("No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right!"), have to do. He has the über boss, Lumbergh (Cole) who makes him work saturdays and who pays very little attention to what Peter says or does. There's also Joanna (Aniston), the waitress from Chotchkie's, the restaurant next door who Peter secretly likes, but has never had the guts to talk to. There's even the consultants, Bob and Bob, who are downsizing the company.Office space is a really fun movie and has gained a little bit of a cult following (especially Gary Cole's character). It also has a great soundtrack, with very clever use of some rap songs. The acting is pretty good, very natural and simple, which goes well with the simple storyline. This is a fine film to own, you'll watch it many times over the years!The movie was based on characters created by Judge (Beavis & Butthead) for a cartoon that used to play on Saturday Night Live, called Milton, for Stephen Root's character, a mousy, mumbling man who works at the office. Judge also makes a cameo of sorts, playing Stan, the manager at the restaurant where Aniston's character works. Also of notice, The Drew Carey Show's Diedrich Bader appears as Lawrence, Peter's next door neighbor and Orlando Jones does a cameo as a magazine subscription salesman.