Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 5.0
The Corporations!
Proving he has more than Beavis and Butthead up his sleeve Mike Judge wrote and directed this gem of a comedy about the dead-end world of a cubicle slave in a faceless corporation. Ron Livingston is Peter, one such cube dweller at Initech, a corporation we never learn much about (I think they develop banking software). It's not important, of course, because Initech looks and feels like so many offices in so many industries all across America. Bored to tears at his job Peter undergoes hypnosis at a therapist and suddenly snapping out of his routine, breaking up with his corporate girlfriend. He goes into a peaceful, carefree sort of trance where he coasts through work until two "consultants" (who signal the coming of layoffs) determine he's just not being challenged enough at work. Meanwhile, Peter's more productive friends are cut away on recommendation of their slimy manager, Bill Lumbergh, played by Gary Cole with such nauseating, weasle-like smarminess that you've seen less talented people get Oscars for smaller roles. The trio of friends, tired of being the little guys, hatch a scheme to funnell money slowly and secretly from Initech. Meanwhile, a neurotic coworker slowly cracks as his desk is moved farther and farther away from everyone else...Office Space is a must for anyone who has ever worked in an office. Sat at a cubicle. Wanted to take a fax machine into an open field and beat it with a bat while blasting Ice Cube. It captures American corporate microculture perfectly, laughing in the face of being micromanaged to death. But it touches on unversal elements and the laughs are steady, captured in the details like the boss everyone hates, or rap music in suburbia. A shame this got such a small theatrical release; it found a nice following on tape and DVD.Here's a small, low budget film delivering laughs and some wicked humor. This is Mike Judge directing but it's not Beavis and Butthead by a longshot. Highly recommended.