Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Get rid of your Mondays with "Office Space"
Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment, an environment necessitating the need for cubicles, needs to go out right away and pick up a copy of "Office Space." Created, written, and directed by Mike Judge-the same guy responsible for "Beavis and Butthead"-this 1999 movie perfectly captures the innumerable torments of the modern white-collar worker. The film did poor box office during its theatrical run, but has since become a massive cult classic on video and DVD. It's no wonder. The movie is funny, cynical, and is the only film in my opinion to adequately use rap music to great effect. To give you an idea of how popular this movie has become-my own mother has heard about the movie and made me rent it so she could watch it. Yep, when your own aging mom knows about a movie, you just know it has jumped the boundaries of a narrow audience and become a pop culture phenomenon. For those poor souls who waste the days of their lives imprisoned in a small box in some generic looking office building out in the suburbs, "Office Space" is the best way to channel your rage. It sure beats going postal, at least.Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingstone) is the moral and physical center of "Office Space." This young guy works at Initech, one of those late '90's computer tech firms that sprang up across the country like weeds. Peter hates his job, hates his bosses, and hates sitting in his cubicle listening to annoying co-workers. He especially despises Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), a vice-president of the company who takes great pleasure in asking Gibbons to work on the weekends even as he hassles him endlessly about those "TPS" reports. The problems don't stop there, though. Peter's girlfriend is a controlling personality with a decidedly loose sexual reputation. Gibbons trudges through his days, finding solace only in two sympathetic co-workers named Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman). His neighbor in the apartment next to his, a construction worker named Lawrence (Diedrich Bader), provides an occasional breath of fresh air as well. Peter Gibbons's life is a complete disappointment, an endless march of days doing nothing more than updating computer programs for Y2K and sitting around in his generic apartment watching Kung Fu. Something has to change before Peter goes off his rocker, and after he visits an occupational hypnotist, it does.After Dr. Swanson (Mike McShane) dies suddenly in the midst of hypnotizing Peter, Gibbons is a changed man. He saunters into work whenever he feels like it, wearing casual clothes and ignoring his bosses. He finally asks out Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), a cute waitress working at a restaurant called Chotchkie's, after months of indecision. After a midday fishing trip, Peter guts his catch on a huge stack of TPS reports. Something is definitely wrong with this guy. His friends worry about his reckless behavior, especially with a couple of consultants-the two Bobs-hired by Lumbergh to pare down the company lurking in the background, and try to shake him out of his malaise. Peter is undeterred and, when he learns his antics have actually garnered him a promotion while the consultants consign his two pals to the unemployment line, hatches a plot to bilk Initech out of a boatload of money. Predictably, the plans go horribly long, leaving Peter, Samir, and Michael in a desperate situation. Will the three survive to work another day? Will Peter find the fulfillment he's been seeking for so long? Will Bill Lumbergh ever quit saying "mmkay"? These questions, and many others, will find resolution at the conclusion of "Office Space."I'm not even going to waste time describing in detail the huge number of characters, all of them brilliant, who populate the universe of "Office Space." Obviously, Milton Waddams (Stephen Root) deserves special mention since he constitutes an entire subplot of the movie. Based on a series of short cartoons Judge made for "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1990s, Milton is quite a character. You'll either love him or hate him; I liked some of his shtick (the stapler, the cake), but thought he detracted somewhat from the main plot involving Peter Gibbons. What really stands out in the movie is the immensely quotable dialogue, some of it arguably the best lines in motion picture history (paraphrasing here):"Somebody has a case of the Mondays!""He [Lumbergh] represents everything that is soulless and wrong.""Ha Ha-he's not related to Bill, is he?"I could go on and on. For instance, the sound Peter makes when he learns from Joanna that she did indeed have a relationship with Lumbergh is priceless: it's the sound a person makes when the very essence of their being is wounded. The fantastic dialogue and horrifically true aphorisms virtually demand repeated viewings of this movie. Everyone who works should own a copy of "Office Space."I've never met anybody who doesn't like this movie. Even my mom got a chuckle out of it. I drop anything I'm doing to watch it whenever it shows up on cable television. It's quite sad the film did poorly at the box office since a sequel, while it probably wouldn't have been as good as the original, could still have been great fun. Unfortunately, the DVD version of the movie is poor, with almost no extras worth mentioning. I'm praying the studio will release a special edition DVD at some point in the future with commentary tracks by Judge, Livingstone, Cole, Herman, Root, and other critical cast members. No other film in recent history deserves such a release more than "Office Space." Yes, it's that good.