Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 4.0
Didn't you get the memo?
From the opening scene, when Peter Gibbons's (Ron Livingston)freeway-jammed car is outpaced by an old man on a walker, to the Monday-morning showdown between Man and Copier, you know this is gonna be a good movie, and it doesn't disappoint. Anyone who has ever sat in a flourescent-lit cubicle listening to easy-listening music for hours at a stretch, week after week, with nothing to look forward to but more of the same until retirment (assuming you don't get downsized first) can relate to "Office Space" -- a surprisingly good first effort from Mike Judge, the guy who produced the lowest of the lowbrow, Beavis & Butt-Head, and later the more subtle "King of the Hill." The performances are really good all around: Livingston is perfecto as office-shmoe Gibbons, a passive nice-guy programmer stuck in a boring, dead-end office job who has a revelation that sooner or later comes to everyone in a cube: we only have so much time on this earth, and we weren't meant to spend it this way. Shedding his passive ways, Gibbons rebels against evil boss Lumbergh (great performance by Gary Cole) and recruits two pals, the unfortunately named Michael Bolton (David Herman -- "Why should I change my name, he's the one that sucks!") and Samir, to help him loot his place of work of a few hundred grand in cash, and sets out to win the girl of his dreams (Jennifer Aniston). The soundtrack, mostly gangsta rap hits by the Geto Boys, is hilariously inappropriate for the setting -- but then again maybe not, since everyone that works at Initech is swallowing a lot of rage (there is a classic scene of skinny computer-nerd Bolton expertly rapping out the lyrics to "The Diary" by Scarface in his car). "Office Space" is a great commentary on the modern workplace, but it is also a (non-violent) revenge fantasy that will speak to anyone who has ever fantasized about smashing a copier with a baseball bat or telling the boss: "It's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I don't care."