PLOT SYNOPSIS:
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is a computer programmer working for Initech in Houston. Every day, he and his friends Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman as not THAT Michael Bolton), suffer endless indignities and humiliations in their soulless workspace from their soulless boss, Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole). For Peter, stuck in his cookie-cutter apartment with paper-thin walls and IKEA furniture, every day is worse than the one before it -- so every day is the worst of his life. To cap it off, Initech has hired a pair of "efficiency experts" to downsize the company. One Friday night, Peter's soon to be ex-girlfriend Anne (Alexandra Wentworth) forces him to go to an occupational hypnotherapist to relieve work stress. While Peter is under hypnosis, the therapist keels over and dies. As he never snaps out of his hypnotic state, Peter has a new outlook on life. If something annoys him, he just ignores it or walks away from it. He is completely relaxed and enjoying life for the first time in a long time. On Monday, Peter skips work and sleeps in. He gets up for lunch and drives down to a restaurant next to his office and asks the waitress he's had a crush on, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), on a date. When Peter stops into the office to pick up his organizer, he's called in to talk to the efficiency experts. Relaxed and friendly, Peter charms them as he describes everything wrong with the office, including his boss. Even as Peter now appears at work only as the mood strikes him, the experts decide he's management material and give him a promotion even as they lay off the hardworking Samir and Michael. Peter then convinces his friends to exact revenge on Initech based upon an idea from Superman III. Not everything works out quite as planned. Office Space originated from writer/director Mike Judge's first animated short of the same name, created in 1991. The short was about Milton (reproduced in the film by Stephen Root), a damaged office drone whose complaints and threats about his sufferings go unheeded. -- Ron Wells
AMG REVIEW:
Mike Judge's first live-action feature, inspired by his animated short of the same name, manages to work some hilariously pointed jabs at corporate culture into its good-natured, meandering plot. Dissatisfied with his job at a lifeless technology company, the laid-back Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) undergoes a mishap during hypnosis therapy and begins to live out his work-related fantasies -- talking back to his boss, destroying office equipment, and playing Tetris on the clock. He also gains the courage to ask out Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), a beautiful waitress he's long had his eye on. Although the subplots involving an embezzling scheme and the requisite romantic misunderstandings between Peter and Joanna are dispensable, Office Space contains many genuinely inspired and memorable scenes, such as the severe beating of an office printer, a party celebrating a co-worker's insurance settlement, and a discussion of how many "pieces of flair" Joanna should wear on her uniform. All of these scenes have something to say about the maddening absurdity of corporate culture, and they're delivered with a gentle yet committed brand of comedy. Jokes are pushed far enough to be funny, but not so far as to become tedious. This mild sense of humor, along with Judge's keen awareness of how the daily grind of office work can drive people a little crazy, makes Office Space an accessible, entertaining satire. -- Skyler Miller
