Mike Judge's workplace satire is a very perceptive look at the cubicle corporate culture. Pointless bureaucracy. Middle-management morons. Blind downsizing. Faux company morale. He tackles it all with a sarcastic wit. In many ways it's a modern revenge fantasy for the white-collar working stiff's desire to stick it to the Man.
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston, BAND OF BROTHERS) is the definition of disgruntled employee. His disdain for his job leads him to find every way to avoid really doing it. His workplace friends Michael Bolton, yeah he gets that a lot, (David Herman, TV's KING OF THE HILL) and Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu, SCARY MOVIE 3) look at their jobs as just a job they do to make a paycheck. Peter's boss Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole, TALLADEGA NIGHTS) is a smarmy SOB, who always makes his employees come in on the weekend, never listens to them, and makes them do pointless redundant work. During a therapy session, Peter realizes that he is tired of living his life by other people's rules and decides to do what he wants all the time. If he wants to not go to work, he won't go. If he wants to ask out the pretty waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston, TV's FRIENDS), he's going to ask her out. When the company threatens lay-offs, Peter, along with Michael and Samir, devise a plan to get back at the company.
Filling out the cast we have Diedrich Bader (TV's THE DREW CARREY SHOW) as Peter's redneck neighbor Lawrence, Stephen Root (DODGEBALL) as the Coke-bottle-glasses-wearing pushover Milton Waddams, and Richard Riehle (MIGHTY JOE YOUNG) as layoff obsessed Tom Smykowski. The employee's everyday frustrations with the company and its management are painfully dead-on and hilarious. Especially when it comes to Lumbergh, played brilliantly by Cole. He is a middle management monster. His first conversion with Peter over new cover-sheet procedure with the inane TPS reports is classic. His subtle, torment of Milton drips of cowardly corporate crassness.
While a great deal of what happens is farce, especially the impression Peter gives the consultants brought in to pick who gets fired, the truth of its targets makes the satire greatly relatable. It's a slightly exaggerated version of reality without going too over-the-top. It makes us feel Peter's frustration and makes us understand his decisions whether we agree with them or not.
Based on Judge's MILTON shorts, which aired on SNL, the film doesn't give its character more than cartoon dimension, but it doesn't matter. It's not really about its characters as individuals, but what they represent in the great scheme of the modern workplace. Companies line staffs with redundant managers who ward over their employees like harpies. The worker's Kafkaesque experience is like descending into the fourth circle of Hell daily. As Peter says, since starting this job each day is worse than the previous day, making now the worse day of his life. Many workers feel this way. So isn't it a joy to see a worker gut a fish over senseless reports or take a temperamental copier out into a field and beat it with baseball bats? OFFICE SPACE is a silly cathartic scream.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
