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Review By Jack Nichols
I popped Mike Judge's Office Space into our VCR and, smiling to myself, prepared to let this black comedy about corporate behavior do its fore-ordained work. My friend, I sensed, would be particularly open to the spirited anarchistic views this very funny film celebrates . As it got underway, he exclaimed: “Hey, that's just what they did to us all where I work, they brought in outside consultants to interview the employees-- and then downsized us by firing fifty. We were all interviewing to keep our own jobs and didn't even know it.” The very next morning—after seeing this movie-- my impressionable friend showed his eagerness to meet my unspoken expectations. He called his boss and, without a single regret, resigned. Currently, he's on a much-needed two-week vacation, and, fortunately, a less-annoying job awaits his return.
This is not, you see, a business-friendly film. And yet I liked it. Why? Probably because my grandmother, without meaning to, influenced my thoughts early on about the business world when she opened the door letting our pet dog into the back yard. She'd always reminded the dog to: “Go and do your business!” Thus, today, when men identify themselves to me as 'business-oriented' or when students study 'business' my inmost reaction is quite different from what they may suppose. While they conjure a financial mountain of green, I see an odorous scatological hill. Office Space expertly communicates my kind of perspective, I'd say. The story begins with our hero, Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) inching his way to work in a traffic jam. He is, as yet, merely an unhappy slave to the system, not fully aware how dissatisfied he's become with things as they are until a hypnotist suddenly eliminates his fears for his future and he learns to live in the now. His self-confidence, much-grown in this period, makes him less of a dweeb. In fact it actually makes him a bit sexy…finally. He meets a pretty waitress (Jennifer Aniston) to whom he confides he no longer intends to go to work nor to pay his bills. Though he's gotten by on his hated job while doing the very minimum as a worker, the consultants take a liking to him immensely, nevertheless, and promote him with a hefty raise. Does anyone remember that truthful book The Peter Principle, about how companies promote their incompetent boobs to officiate at the very highest levels? Peter's two best harder-working buddies, Samir, a heterosex-hungry Saudi boy and Michael, a hesitant computer nerd who hates and is at war with a malfunctioning office copier, are slated by the outsider consultants to be fired. When Peter discovers this ugly fact, he conspires with his two friends to bring company stock returns to their knees. But needless to say, they bungle the job. This comedy is filmdom's greatest-ever modern workplace satire. Milton (Stephen Root) portrays the ultimate corporate dork and is thus my favorite worker-bee in Office Space. Poor persecuted Milton gets the film's last laugh. If you're curious as to how, why not throw an office party, rent this extraordinarily funny movie and then congratulate yourself for bringing a flash of enlightenment to America's teeming armies of serfs, vassals, and oafs. |
Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston star in Office Space
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