Office Space [1999]
Director: Mike Judge
Actor: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Gary Cole, John C. McGinley
This low budget movie is, to be honest, pretty fucking awesome. However, it might not appeal to those people not either a) working in an office or b) stuck in a job that is devouring their will to live. Much like the hit comedy series “The Office,” some of the characters are so recognisable, some of the frustrations hit so close to home, that you immediately want to give up your job and seek a change in career.
The premise of the movie is fairly simple; Peter (Livingston) is a software developer working for a relatively sizable IT company. Software developer might be too lofty a term to describe Peter’s position because he’s basically a code-monkey working on the Y2K problem in various software packages. For those of you who haven’t actively lived through the Y2K hype, or aren’t familiar with software development; this means sorting through thousands of lines of code, changing a 2-digit year variable into a 4-digit year variable. I can’t imagine more mindnumbing work without thinking of factories and production lines. He spends most of his morning zoning out, pretending to work and just waiting for his day to end, and if we are to believe him, spends about fifteen minutes a week doing actual work. Bureaucracy is running rampant throughout the company, and Peter is frequently asked by his manager Lumbergh (Cole) to work on saturdays and sundays. Needless to say, Peter is dissatisfied with his job. However, he’s also not the most ambitious fellow in the world, something his girlfriend tries to remedy by taking him to a hypnotherapist.
That’s where the problem starts; he explains how he’s frustrated with his life and the therapist hypnotises him, telling him to forget about his worries and his stress. Before Peter is revived from his hypnotisement the therapist gets a heartattack and dies, leaving Peter perpetually unstressed and unconcerned with his work. And just in time for a big reorganisation of the company in which everyone gets to do job interviews for their own job. Hilarity ensues.
This movie is kind of like the club skank; cheap, easy, but a lot of fun for one evening.
