(Warning: Spoilers follow)
After planning to for ages, I finally got around to watching Mike Judge’s 1999 film ‘Office Space’ recently. Overlooked at the time of release, it’s developed a growing reputation this decade for being a dead-on comic satire on the worst aspects of the modern workplace office culture.
As someone who’s worked in the office environment for years, I was particularly interested whether its reputation stood up to such lofty claims. As it turned out it did, but only in a limited fashion.
The story centres around dejected company worker Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingstone) who’s life is a complete misery due to the oppressive workplace environment of the software company he works for. However, through hypnotic suggestion, Gibbons’ whole mental attitude changes and not only do things completely turnaround at his workplace but he suddenly gets into a steady relationship with a waitress called Joanna (Jennifer Anniston) who he’d been too scared to ask out previously. But then things start to go awry…
The film starts off superbly; it brillantly pinpoints the features of the modern workplace environment that can make it such an ordeal. From personal experience I can vouch that its satire has a ring of truth to it. One of my favourite scenes (actually occurring at Joanna’s workplace, a TGIF-type restaurant) is where the manager is admonishing Joanna for the lack of ‘flair’ items she’s wearing; according to company policy she’s wearing an accepted amount but management feels she needs to “express” herself more. It really nails a modern trend of corporate-speak where manager types desperately try to portray the work environment as different from the ‘bad old days’ and employees’ wishes are really important… just as long of course as they fit perfectly in accordance with what the company wants.
The highpoint of the film is the character of Gibbons’ incredibly smarmy and obnoxious boss Lumbergh, played by Gary Cole. It works because Cole never falls into the tempting trap of overplaying it into caricature, he just relies on creating the persona of someone who always acts in a complacent and smug manner who never has to get angry because he knows all those under him are brow-beaten and dispirited and can’t fight back. It’s a terrific characterisation, brilliantly and hilariously played by Cole.
But just when it appears its going to become a minor classic it loses its focus in the 2nd half. Firstly, it develops a plotline of Gibbons and his two work colleagues developing a way to scam money off the company. It’s mildly diverting (the banter between the three friends is good) but it’s nothing special and lacks the bite of the office-based satire in the early stages.
An even bigger misstep is the romance between Gibbons and Joanna; it’s perfunctory and superficial with their breakup scene especially weak. Anniston’s performance isn’t to blame as she’s adequate; but like all the films I’ve seen her in there’s nothing in her performance that suggests dozens of lesser known actresses couldn’t have done equally good a job (or better).
What is particularly regrettable is that the best character in the film – Lumbergh – is almost totally ignored in the latter stages. As a result of this loss of focus, the film’s finale is tame and flat.
My earlier point about the film only partially meeting its reputation wasn’t that it wasn’t up to standard as a top-class office satire – it was – but it strayed away from that into much less interesting areas. For example, if the film had been a romantic comedy based around the Gibbons/Joanna relationship, it would’ve been immediately forgotten.
I don’t want to be too down on this film. It has many fine qualities, funny moments and good performances; the ability to deliver good deadpan satire shouldn’t be underestimated. It just felt vaguely disappointing that it set itself up well to be an absolute gem of a film and instead settled for being merely good.
100% agreement. After seeing this I would always remark (when the subject came up), “The first 45 minutes are great.Hilarious.Inspired. The rest…not so much.”
As a result, I’ve only seen it once. Most of the quotable lines are in the first half. Once they concoct their scheme it goes off the rails…completely.
Probably all true, but that kind of unevenness is a hallmark of Judge’s work. He’s a brilliant satirist but a weak storyteller.
I dunno, I don’t have a big problem with the second half. The stuff I remember is about the scheme, like Orlando Jones’ cameo as the magazine salesman, the line about “pounded in the ass” prison, the references to Superman III, and then Milton’s revenge.
My god…you’re right about Judge…idiocracy is brilliant it’s first 30 minutes…but then…COMPLETELY loses itself and is really quite awful. Those first thirty minutes, though…
If they could connect the first 45 of Office Space with the first 30 of Idiocracy, you’d have one of the best comedies ever. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
“It says on your chart you’re fucked up. Uh, you talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded.”
lmfao (And I never use internet-speak…I’m obviously laughing a lot)
Not enough people have seen that movie. The family tree montage in the beginning is one of the funniest things ever…and sums up the two sides of this country pretty well.
I heard Stephen Root on NPR the other day and he sounds like a perfectly normal guy, but man he’s played some seriously strange characters.
I don’t disagree that there’s some good bits in the scheme section – loved the Superman III references (“underrated movie”) – and it helped that all three characters were likable. But it lacked the satiric undercurrent of the office-based scenes and the way the scheme went wrong (when it becomes too successful) wasn’t convincingly handled.
As for the Milton character, I know he’s highly regarded by many reviews I’ve read but I just didn’t find him funny at all. I think that was due to him crossing the line into caricature that Lumbergh never does.