Office Space (1999)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Dusty: (on the idea of writing reviews 10 hours per week for a living] It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us.

Rating: R
Director: Mike Judge
Writers: Mike Judge
Stars: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Anniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, Gary Cole
Release Date: February 19, 1999 (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

Peter Gibbons is a frustrated and unmotivated programmer who works at a Texas-based software company, Initech. Unable to stand up to his overcritical girlfriend, Anne, he is in love with local waitress Joanna, but is afraid to speak to her. He is friends with co-workers Samir Nagheenanajar (who hates that no one can pronounce his name) and Michael Bolton (who hates having the same name as the famous singer). Other co-workers are Milton Waddams, a meek collator who mumbles to himself and is mostly ignored by the rest of the office; and Tom Smykowski, a jaded product manager who is routinely scared of being fired. The staff suffers under top-heavy, callous management, especially from vice president Bill Lumbergh, whom Peter hates and avoids confronting. Lumbergh takes obvious delight in micromanaging all his staff in a drab monotone way. He repeatedly makes Milton move his desk, and assigns him humiliating tasks, while making Peter work almost every weekend.

Anne persuades Peter to attend an occupational hypnotherapy session led by Dr. Swanson. Swanson hypnotizes Peter and tells him to feel relaxed and stop caring about his job until he snaps his fingers. However, Swanson suddenly dies of a heart attack before snapping Peter out of it. Peter sleeps soundly through the next day, ignoring phone calls from Lumbergh and Anne, who angrily breaks up with him while confirming suspicions that she has been cheating on him.

A pair of business consultants are brought in to help the company downsize, and Peter begins dating Joanna. She works at a trendy chain restaurant, and is required to wear “pieces of flair” (buttons allowing employees to “express themselves”). Her boss hassles her for not wearing more than the required minimum.

Peter eventually shows up to work and casually disregards office protocol, stealing Lumbergh’s parking space, violating the dress code, and removing a cubicle wall that blocks his view out the window. Impressed by Peter’s frank insights into Initech’s problems, the consultants promote him despite Lumbergh’s misgivings; however, Michael and Samir are both laid off. Milton is also expected to be laid off, but it is learned that it already happened five years ago but neither Milton nor the accounting department was notified due to a payroll glitch. Accounting is told to just stop Milton’s salary payments without telling him. Milton is subjected to further mistreatment, including the confiscation of his beloved red stapler and the constant relocating of his desk, eventually down to the basement.

Tired of being mistreated, Peter, Michael, and Samir decide to take revenge by infecting Initech’s accounting system with a computer virus designed by Michael to divert huge numbers of fractions of pennies into a bank account. Peter successfully installs the virus and on Michael and Samir’s last day, he steals a frequently malfunctioning printer, which the three proceed to destroy in a field. At a weekend party, Peter hears rumors from a colleague that Joanna had slept with Lumbergh. When Joanna confirms this, a heated exchange leads to them breaking up. Frustrated with her job, Joanna quits in response to another lecture about her lack of “flair”.

On Monday, Peter discovers that a bug in Michael’s code has caused the virus to steal over $300,000 across the weekend, which guarantees they will be caught. Unable to conceal the crime, Peter decides to accept full responsibility, writing a confession and slipping it under Lumbergh’s office door after hours, along with traveler’s checks for the stolen money. Peter learns that the ‘Lumbergh’ with whom Joanna slept was Ron Lumbergh, another software engineer unrelated to Bill Lumbergh. He meets Joanna, who has started a new job at another restaurant. He apologizes, and they reconcile.

The next morning, Peter drives to Initech expecting to be arrested, but discovers that Milton has burnt down the building, destroying all evidence. Peter enjoys a new job as a construction worker with his neighbor, Lawrence, Samir and Michael begin new jobs at Initech’s rival, Initrode, while Milton, having found the traveler’s checks, goes on vacation in Mexico and continues to be mistreated.

My Review:

I don’t mean to make anyone feel old, but this movie is a quarter century old. Despite that, the smart and irreverent workplace comedy remains hilarious. I suspect it will remain funny for as long as corporate work environments remain needlessly complicated and dehumanizing.

I don’t think that Judge is necessarily taking a shot at capitalism, per se, with Office Space, but I do think he is lampooning the way it exists in the present. He seems to hate the phony politeness of it all. Lumbergh politely orders his employees to work on the weekends. He also politely orders Milton to move his desk several times throughout the movie. He and payroll politely fail to get answers for Milton about why his paychecks are not coming anymore. Peter – when his obvious existential despair is showing on his face – is asked about having “a case of the Mondays.” Joanna’s boss politely tries to create employee enthusiasm through the wearing of “flair” rather than generating or hiring based on genuine enthusiasm. As a result, she is never doing what he wants despite doing what she is asked. Most of the film’s story is told around a setting of corporate layoffs, all of which are being attempted with smiles, friendly conversations, (and letting people go on Fridays so they have a chance to cool off over the weekend.) There is a falseness to all of this politeness that resonated with audiences in 1999 and still does today. A fist hitting you in the face is still a fist hitting you in the face, even if it is wearing a velvet glove.

Peter Gibbons becomes happier when he starts acting more authentically and less politely. He begins ignoring the dress code, tears down the cubicle that blocks his view of the window, and tells the two Bobs how miserable he is at work and is rewarded with a promotion and a raise. His love life also improves when he embraces directness and authenticity. Joanna in turn, perhaps through Peter’s influence, stops being polite to her boss and ends up with a better flair-free job as a result. Ultimately, Peter ends up working on a construction crew, alongside his neighbor Lawrence, who told him in absolutely no uncertain terms earlier in the film, that nobody had ever asked him if he was having a case of the Mondays and he told Peter that saying something like that could get you beat up. Strangely, the less polite work environment was the better one. Lawrence has a relatively simple but apparently happy existence. Peter and his co-workers, on the other hand, are living lives of quiet desperation, highlighted to great comedic effect by their listening to gangster rap music throughout. They’re all angry, they feel powerless, and they collectively look feeble in their work clothes.

It’s difficult to pick a best scene from the movie, but probably my favorite is when Peter, Michael Bolton, and Samir drive one of their office printers out to an empty field and proceed to beat it to death. Perhaps no piece of technology is more closely linked with intra-office anger and frustration than the printer. If you had told me in 1999 that printers would continue to be notoriously awful well into the 21st century, I would have found that to be terribly depressing.

This movie is very funny, but it is rated R due primarily to the adult language and subject matter throughout, and in particular due to one memorable and hilariously horrifying scene wherein Peter imagines his awful boss – coffee mug in hand – sleeping with Joanna.

Mike Judge comedies are usually smart, insightful, and with a lot of non-conformist sentiment in tow. Office Space may very well be his magnum opus. It’s extremely funny, paced well, and perfectly cast. Gary Cole as Lumbergh and Stephen Root as Milton are standouts in particular. I fully recommend giving this a rewatch if you haven’t seen it in a while and you’re looking for a good comedy.

Have you seen Office Space? What did you think?