Product: Office Space (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Modern day "Better off Dead"
This movie was done in classic 80's style and has strong similarities to one of my old favorites: "Better Off Dead". In both movies, an average guy one day decides to turn against his mundane and hopeless life to win the day. It even shares the element of a hilarious goofball whose character is slowly developed in little transitional scenes to receive the butt of some joke. In Better Off Dead, it was Ricky; and in Office Space, Milton (the character whose short sketches by Mike Judge gave birth to this movie). David Herman was sort-of ok as Michael Bolton, but I wish they'd cast John Cusack for his part.The movie focuses on a trio of software developers who do some really stupid things in the face of a company layoff. The plot isn't great, but what carries the movie is that every scene is darned funny -- most of it is achingly so.I work at a fairly large software company, and everyone on the technical side there is hip to this movie. The phrase: "Did you get the memo about those new TPS report covers?" has become a pretty standard response.-Jason