Office Space (1999)

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Office Space (1999)

You don't have to work in an office to appreciate

Mike Judge has always deserved more credit than Beavis and Butt-head have accorded him, and Office Space seems to have given him some of it. The movie introduces us to Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), a programmer at a greedy computer corporation who hates his job, and his two friends Michael No-Relation-to-Michael-Bolton Bolton (David Herman) and Samir Nayeenanajar (Ajay Naidu), who indulge in fantasies about ripping the company off and unloading a can of whup-ass on a recalcitrant laser printer. When Peter is "relaxed" by a hypnotist who dies of a heart attack before he can complete any further therapy, Peter finds himself in such a state of devil-may-care that he blows off work for the weekend, shows up late, emits a continual aura of happy apathy and even manages to strike up a relationship with waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston).

Intech, the computer corporation, could replace Arkham Asylum without anyone really noticing. There's the coldhearted boss Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), the overcheerful receptionist (Alexandra Wentworth) and the potentially psychotic mumbler Milton (Stephen Root), all of whom endure everything from birthday parties to layoff announcements with the same blank-faced resignation, and this pervasive gloom is what adds flavor to Livingston's performance. When he is offered a promotion by the corporation heads (one of whom is played by Scrubs' John C. McGinley) because of the "upper management potential" they see in his candor about the uselessness of his position, Peter learns of his friends' imminent layoff and talks them into planting a virus into the company system that will siphon off money into their account.

Of course, the plan goes awry, but that's only the surface level humor. Judge knows how to mix genres--just watch the Beastie Boys' music video-rendition of the three office workers taking a baseball bat to the printer that's been giving them so much trouble and try to hold in your horselaughter, even if you're not a Beastie Boys fan (as I am not). Watch Cole's repeated "Yeah...uh-huh, well we're going to need you to work more...so if you could come in at nine on Saturday...you know, uh, that would be great" reach a hysterical crescendo as Peter, in the midst of a fevered imagination of Joanna and Lumbergh having sex, envisions Lumbergh pushing aside a sweaty bare leg (presumably Aniston's, though they might not have been able to pay her for even that much nudity) in order to sip from his coffee mug and mumble directions to her.

Another great thing about the movie is that it has enough one-liner-type jokes to fill a ninety-minute slot without even bothering with a story: witness the next-door neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Baeder), the magazine salesman (Orlando Jones) and the fraternity boy-Cassanova Drew (Greg Pitts) weave in and out of the action giving us laughs peripheral to the actual corporate world Judge is tearing apart. It is, of course, the infamous Milton of the Saturday Night Live and animated shorts who manages to steal much of the action, although you can sort of predict his part to play in the mess about thirty minutes into the film. But again, that doesn't matter. Judge has managed to deliver a satire that doesn't work too hard at satirizing. My only wish is that he directs this same sense of humor towards the private enterprise, the educational system, or even the entertainment industry which has short-changed him in the past.

--Long