USA
Recognizable Faces:
Jennifer Aniston
Diedrich Bader
Directed By:
Mike Judge
Believe it or not, yesterday was the first time I watched Office Space. The movie is directed and written by Mike Judge, the mind behind Beavis & Butthead and King Of The Hill, which is an insurance plan against failure in my mind. It couldn't be completely bad. It turned out being not bad at all, but despite being a comedy, Office Space has a very serious purpose, which is to expose the futility of middle shelf corporate thinking.
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) works in a dead end cubicle job and has serious anxiety about it. Just by seeing his boss Lumbergh (Gary Cole), you will understand why. He goes to the hypnotherapist about it, but sadly, his doctor dies of a heart attack before waking him up, which turn Peter into sort of this paramount of relaxation. He becomes the coolest cat on the block. He over sleeps, shows up when he feels like it and more important, he gives this memorable speech to two consultants, hired for a streamlining process (which means firing people in corp. talk). When his friends Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman) get fired to have the company's stock going up a quarter of a cent, he schemes out a fraud plan to give his employer Initech, some comeuppance.
Office Space illustrates a point I was trying to make not long ago about the irreconcilable characters of institutions and individuality, when consultant Bob Slydell (John McGinley) follows Peter's lead and proposes a stock option to stimulate productivity, Lumbergh & Dom Portwood (Joe Bays), prefer to go forward with the firings. Their decision is positive for their personal wealth (their stock go up) and their job security, but ultimately detrimental for Initech as it's going to sabotage any type of mass scale productivity. This is what I mean by middle shelf corporate thinking. Great companies grow bigger by merging and by sharinf their stock and augment the possibilities, but middle shelf thinkers are happy to scrape the bottom of the barrel and make it through the day with the bare minimum. They don't see further than the bottom of their pockets.
I'm being very serious here, because I think Office Space has something important to say, but it's also a comedy. In that matter, it's an average comedy, with some very funny, but scarce jokes. There's maybe five or six spots in the movie where I laughed. I did laughed very hard though, but what I reproach to its humor is to not be connected at all with what the movie is trying to say. Humor is a side dish to Office Space and yet, it's a comedy. It makes a good use of its gangsta rap soundtrack, applying it to the white boy universe of corporations, with the two pinnacles being relaxed Peter going to the office on the Geto Boys' "Good to be a gangster" or with the three friends, destroying the office printer with some violent rap tune. You might have to work in IT to get them, but printer jokes are really funny. My favorite one being when Michael received a cryptic error message on his print job, he hit the machine and yelled: "What the fuck does that even mean?" I had to pause the movie to laugh it out.
Bottom line, Office Space is not perfect, but it makes a good point, willingly or not. It made its way into cult status for a good reason, it's speaking to a majority of people that are gradually pushed against the wall, willingly or not.
SCORE: 81%
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) works in a dead end cubicle job and has serious anxiety about it. Just by seeing his boss Lumbergh (Gary Cole), you will understand why. He goes to the hypnotherapist about it, but sadly, his doctor dies of a heart attack before waking him up, which turn Peter into sort of this paramount of relaxation. He becomes the coolest cat on the block. He over sleeps, shows up when he feels like it and more important, he gives this memorable speech to two consultants, hired for a streamlining process (which means firing people in corp. talk). When his friends Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman) get fired to have the company's stock going up a quarter of a cent, he schemes out a fraud plan to give his employer Initech, some comeuppance.
Office Space illustrates a point I was trying to make not long ago about the irreconcilable characters of institutions and individuality, when consultant Bob Slydell (John McGinley) follows Peter's lead and proposes a stock option to stimulate productivity, Lumbergh & Dom Portwood (Joe Bays), prefer to go forward with the firings. Their decision is positive for their personal wealth (their stock go up) and their job security, but ultimately detrimental for Initech as it's going to sabotage any type of mass scale productivity. This is what I mean by middle shelf corporate thinking. Great companies grow bigger by merging and by sharinf their stock and augment the possibilities, but middle shelf thinkers are happy to scrape the bottom of the barrel and make it through the day with the bare minimum. They don't see further than the bottom of their pockets.
I'm being very serious here, because I think Office Space has something important to say, but it's also a comedy. In that matter, it's an average comedy, with some very funny, but scarce jokes. There's maybe five or six spots in the movie where I laughed. I did laughed very hard though, but what I reproach to its humor is to not be connected at all with what the movie is trying to say. Humor is a side dish to Office Space and yet, it's a comedy. It makes a good use of its gangsta rap soundtrack, applying it to the white boy universe of corporations, with the two pinnacles being relaxed Peter going to the office on the Geto Boys' "Good to be a gangster" or with the three friends, destroying the office printer with some violent rap tune. You might have to work in IT to get them, but printer jokes are really funny. My favorite one being when Michael received a cryptic error message on his print job, he hit the machine and yelled: "What the fuck does that even mean?" I had to pause the movie to laugh it out.
Bottom line, Office Space is not perfect, but it makes a good point, willingly or not. It made its way into cult status for a good reason, it's speaking to a majority of people that are gradually pushed against the wall, willingly or not.
SCORE: 81%
