Office Space Review

If you have ever sat at a desk in a huge room of gray cubicles, you've probably had an Office Space experience. I loved this movie. I love ironic humor anyway...

The film begins with Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) starting yet another day as an IT guy at the Initech company, which is busy fixing code in software for the "Y2K" switch. Moments after he sits down, his boss Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) alerts him to the fact that he used the wrong cover sheet on his "TPS Report." He admits the mistake, and said yes, he did get the memo about the new cover sheets. In the next few minutes, two of his other bosses stop by or call him on the phone alerting him to his mistake, and he has to assure them both that yes, he did get the memo. His superiors say they'll get him another copy, even though he is holding the memo in his hand.

This has happened to me. I have been a cog in the wheel and reminded over and over about an insignificant mistake. i couldn't relate to this movie or the cartoon Dilbert before I worked in a big office. If you relate to Dilbert, you will love Office Space.

Peter has two friends at Initech: Samir Nagheenanajar, who is endlessly frustrated that no one can pronounce his last name, and Michael Bolton, who has issues of his own with having the same name as a "no talent ass-clown who started winning Grammys" when he was about 12.

They've got the usual issues: co-workers who won't budge on turning down their radio, the insanely positive ones who declare you've got "a case of the Mondays!" if you gripe, the employee who is constantly worried about being fired, overachievers, brown-nosers, office equipment working improperly, rush-hour traffic, boredom, feeling unappreciated.... you name it, it's happening at Initech.

Peter's girlfriend Anne gets him to go see an "occupational hypnotherapist." While there, Peter explains to doctor Swanson that ever since he has started working, every day has been worse than the one before, so "every day you see me... that's on the worst day of my life." Dr. Swanson starts hypnotizing Peter to make him more relaxed at work, and has a heart attack and dies before he can "snap" Peter out of his trance.

Well, Peter does get a new lease on life from this experience. He finally gets the nerve to ask Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), the cute waitress at Chotchkie's out. Instead of slacking off at work and pretending to be productive, he blows off working the weekend and shows up to work on Monday in shorts and flip-flops, late as usual and blows off his boss' attempt to discipline him.

It turns out that that day, there are some "efficiency experts" there to evaluate peoples' jobs and there will inevitably be layoffs from their findings. Peter saunters in and tells the experts, Bob Slidell, and Bob Porter (known as "the Bobs"), exactly what he really does all day! He includes little facts about coming in 15 minutes late and using the side door so he won't get caught, staring at his desk for 45 minutes pretending to work, and he tells them that in any given day he does just enough work so that he won't be fired, but no more.

After the evaluations are done, the Bobs recommend that Michael and Samir be fired, and opine that Peter has "upper-management potential written all over him." Peter tells 
Samir and Michael that they are getting let go before the company does. Michael tells Peter and Samir that he could program a virus to steal money from Initech without them noticing. It involves rounding off monetary transactions and putting the fractions of a cent into a private bank account. Michael said even though it was done in the movie Superman II, Initech was so busy with the Y2K software that they wouldn't notice.

They do it, but not everything goes smoothly.

This movie has a few storylines in it. Peter and Joanna's romance, woefully under appreciated employee Milton Waddams whose desk is moved all the time and mumbles under his breath that if his desk moves again he's going to "set the building on fire." Joanna's issues working at Chotchkie's (kind of a Bennigan's - TGIFriday's mix), and Peter, Michael, and Samir's foray into criminal life. They work together well, and the film does not seem disjointed.

This was written by Mike Judge of Beavis and Butt-head fame. He has a cameo as Stan, Joanna's boss at Chotchkie's. There's no doubt as to why this film has become a "cult classic" among American office workers.