Rating: 
 

The Info

Directed by: Mike Judge
Written by: Mike Judge
Starring: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Ajay Naidu, David Herman, Gary Cole, Stephen Root
Produced by: Daniel Rappaport, Michael Rotenberg

The Nutshell

A depressed software engineer gets hypnotized into not caring about his job and he and his co-workers proceed to cause mayhem at Initech, the company where they work.

The Review

    Office Space, directed and written by Mike Judge, is slightly more intelligent than his animated show Beavis & Butthead. Unfortunately, it is also less funny. Based on an early comic strip of Judge's, Milton, Space is all about the ups and downs of working in a cubicle in a giant corporation. Similar in content to the comic strip Dilbert, this film will probably be much better received by audience members who work in similar situations every day.

    Ron Livingston stars as Peter Gibbons, an average cubicle inhabitant at Initech, a middle-of-the-road software company. He works as little as he possibly can every day, taking naps, playing games on his computer etc, while watching the clock for lunchtime. The only joy in his daily routine is Joanna, the waitress (Aniston) at Chochkies, his lunch hangout. His pals Samir and Michael Bolton (Naidu and Herman) sludge through their daily routines as well.

    Peter goes to see a hypnotherapist who puts him in a trance and tells him that he will not care about his job anymore. The gag is that the hypnotherapist dies immediately following this, and the hypnosis is never retracted. This is the impetus behind every silly, carefree thing Peter does at Initech from there on out. It's a simple premise, but thankfully works. Eventually Peter and company get themselves immersed in computer viruses, theft of company funds and all kinds of mayhem. Along the way, various office characters like the boss, Lumbergh (Cole), and Milton the freaky, mumbling loser show up and add little bits of comedy to the moment.

    The strengths of Office Space are in the fact that these silly things that keep happening to the characters do happen in real life. Samir's reaction to a printer that is perpetually getting paper jams, and Peter's attempts to progress out of a traffic jam are among the best, with the added bonus of an old man with a walker making better time along the sidewalk than Peter in his car. We laugh heartily at these things, because they have happened to us all at one time or another.

    Unfortunately, Judge is used to Beavis & Butthead, where a scene lasts only about 3 or 4 minutes and then a music video takes over. This is his first attempt at a full-length feature movie, and it shows. While the situations we are shown are hilarious, the gaps between them are long. Judge doesn't seem to know how to adequately bridge his jokes with interesting dialogue. It's just funny moment, nothing for 5 minutes, funny moment, etc. Also, while all of the characters seem like perfect computer nerds, their actions are often boring. It makes for a masterfully drawn vision of the workforce, but not a consistently funny one. Lastly, several sub-plots simly don't get our interest. A love possibility between Peter and Joanna is lacklustre and we never know what they see in each other. Another sub-plot with mumbling Milton is creepy rather than funny. Will this comedy appeal to you? If you've worked in an office building before, you'll love it. If you have no idea what makes a man flipping out over a jammed printer funny, you might want to skip it.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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