Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 4.0
Comedy of surprising complexity - Film & DVD review
The Film:Mike Judge is a genius. Using a number of relative unknowns he spends 2 hours skewering the people and situations all of us cubicle-dwellers hate at work. While sometimes slightly uneven in composition, it remains a bravura comedy that'll keep you laughing through to the end.Peter Gibbons (Livingston) hates his job at Initech, so much so that each day there feels worse than the day before. But when a botched-up hypnotism session leaves him unworried about his job and other cares Peter feels free to throw caution to the wind, deciding to stop coming in to work. He's amazed to find that instead of getting fired he's getting promoted while his hard-working friends (Ajay Naidu & David Herman, in the best buddy-buddy supporting actor performances of 1999) are getting downsized. They together decide to rip off the company, and hilarity insues. While the idea of playing into all of our hate of the foibles of the office workplace seems like a 1-note tune, Judge's writing and directing keeps a brisk pace and provides enough insight and analysis of why we despise these things and how they could be better that it never feels that way.Look for Stephen Root as Milton, by far the most hilarious character, stealing every scene he's in. Close behind is Gary Cole as Bill Lumbergh, about the slimiest weasel of a boss I could have imagined. Jennifer Aniston, while not bad, could have been replaced by virtually anyone else in the part who would have done as well with Judge's writing.The DVD & Technical aspects:While the sound seems a little harsh and the color tones and cinematography may be a little inconsistent, these look like problems related to the movie's production, not the printing of the DVD itself. Chalk it up to the fact that it's a low, low-budget comedy - if you've seen enough films you'll see this has slightly sub-par production values in general. The menu is interestingly designed, the only real extra is the preview trailer. The movie may be in Dolby 5.1, but it's a dialogue-based office comedy so as you imagine it doesn't use much of its capabilities to provide sense of place.