Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 4.0
A timeless movie that (frighteningly) will never grow old
As long as corporate America insists on treating people like farm animals or widgits, Office Space is going to hit home on several levels: It is a wickedly funny parody of life as a Cube Farm inhabitant; it is dead-on in all the silly and ultimately pointless exercises that upper management goes through to justify itself; and it caters to every worker's fantasy of some day Stickin' it to The Man.There are numerous weirdly comical moments, as when the lead character, Peter Gibbons, is reclaiming his life and his sanity at the office while a rap song about "it's good to be a gangster" booms in the background; and the hysterical juxtaposition of white, straight-arrow geek programmer Michael Bolton swaying in his car to some truly off-color rap lyrics. The mumbling, goggle-eyed character Milton Waddams (EVERY office has one, you know it does) almost steals the whole show with his obsessiveness about his red Swingline stapler.I have worked with many of the characters in this movie, and only wish that, like Peter, I had recognized far earlier in my "career" that people are not meant to live in fabric-lined enclosures and fret over things like mission statements and TPS reports.Although the movie is a bit dated now in terms of how people dress, etc., and the rap songs in the soundtrack might be offensive to some, Office Space is a movie you will want to watch several times, so you can absorb all of the lessons it has to offer.