Office Space (1999)

Here is a film for the working man. Here is a film for Joe Cubicle Schmo who can't seem to catch a break. Here is for every white-collar, lower middle-class underachiever who ever hated his job, his boss, his coworker. Here is a film for anybody who just wanted to break out of the rut. Is it perfect? No. But it will have you laughing your ass off and ignoring what it could have done better.

At Initech (or which ever other company you would prefer to substitute in its place), depressed, under-the-radar worker Peter Gibbons finds himself at a crossroads in life. He can never seem to get to work earlier than 15 minutes late because of traffic that only ever seems to move in everybody else's lanes, sits in his tiny desk eight hours a day changing the dates of transactions from 1998 to '98, and heads to a super cheesy burger joint everyday for lunch with his two buddies, Samir Naghe...something, and Michael Bolton (no relation). His girlfriend is cheating on him, but there is nothing he can do except go an occupational hypnotherapist who--before his untimely death--places Peter into a state of euphoria.

With newly found confidence he snags the girl of his dreams (played very cutely by Jennifer Aniston) and moves up in the corporate ranks. It certainly isn't by choice, but by not flying in the middle he has altered the course that so many other office workers resign their lives to. But when he learns that his two friends are about to be sacked the three decide to take down Initech with an infallible plan.

Unfortunately once the narrative finally begins to take hold that is when the beauty of the film goes away. The hilarity of this film comes in the way the typical day of the typical man is captured with Peter Gibbons. He goes to work and the fat operator sitting next to him answers every call with the same chirpy cadence in her voice, every five seconds. His boss is worst type of slimy schmuck that every one of us has had as our superior at some point. Peter forgot to attach a new cover letter on a report causing an stir and sending half a dozen people out to resend him the memo. Initech owns the paper copier from Hell.

The comedy comes from the mid-level waste that invariably bogs down the system, and the fantasy that all workers have about doing something more. The faults come when those dreams begin to come into reality, and from there the comedy becomes a little slapdash. I liked just watching him struggle to get through life day by day, and how that struggle became easier when he just stopped caring. Actually doing something about it made it too fantastic at the end--as tame as it was--and then it became routine Hollywood.

All that said and done, the first two-thirds of this film I was in stitches. Several years ago I had seen this movie, but it was before I had a true taste of the working world and just how perfectly that prison cell of a life was captured in this movie. Had writer/director Mike Judge (creator of the Milton animated shorts on which this was based) stuck to his guns and kept out the "plot", this would be a comedy that would become classic, and worthy of the title.

3/4