Office Space
20th Century Fox, 1999
Directed by Mike Judge

$$$$

Work is hell. The corporate purgatory of Mike Judge's dead-on satire, Office Space (the first live-action effort from the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill), makes Dilbert's workplace look like a paradise. The film is an recruiting ad for unemployment.

Office Space opens with a hilarious traffic jam sequence that's a great set-piece in itself, then proceeds to take us through a god-awful day-in-the-life of corporate drone Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston). He spends his hours going through line after mind-numbing line of code to fix a Y2K glitch for his company (what the company actually does is never said -- the fact that it doesn't matter is part of the joke). Toiling away on this task in his bland cubicle, with little motivation to excel, makes Peter wonder if it's really worth all the trouble just to have money for food and shelter. What Peter really wants, is to do absolutely nothing.

One day, Peter goes to see a hypnotist. He's put under a spell to make him forget his worries, but the hypnotist collapses and dies of a heart attack before Peter can be brought out of the trance. Still in a daze, Peter decides to simply stop going to his job. Naturally, he gets promoted.

Ultimately, after the company begins laying people off, Peter and two software engineer buddies decide to get even with their bosses. But first, in what may be the most cathartic moment ever captured on film, they get even with the damn copy machine.

Office Space is based on a series of animated shorts that Judge did years ago, before he hit it big with Beavis and Butt-head. The cartoons appeared on Saturday Night Live, and this movie is funnier than all of the other movies-based-on-SNL-skits combined. Those shorts were about a lowly office worker named Milton, who lets his boss treat him like little more than furniture, all the while, muttering under his breath that he's "going to burn down the building." In the movie, Milton takes a backseat to the other workers, but with his bad skin and coke-bottle glasses, News Radio's Stephen Root does a gut-busting job of bringing him to life. One look at the guy and you know he's going to "go postal."

Judge's animation-style, it turns out, translates very easily to live action. Everything in the movie looks real -- but just slightly exaggerated enough to be funny. From Peter's low-budget apartment, to the T.G.I. Friday's wannabee restaurant where the characters hang out, none of the scenes feel like they were shot on a soundstage (the production might not have had the budget to shoot on more expensive sets, but that actually works to the film's benefit). The only big name star to look for here is Jennifer Aniston, who has a small part as Peter's dream girl. Gary Cole (The Brady Bunch Movie) is letter-perfect as the World's Worst Boss. Judge himself also makes a cameo as a restaurant manager who proves there are evil bosses outside the corporate world as well.

(c) Copyright 1999