Office Space (1999) : A funny, satirical movie about the modern office life.

Why does the Office Space resonate with me so much? Well, that is simple. It talks about the frustrations of a corporate job and life. A satirical take on the topic. It has great and funny moments subdued with character progressions. Office Space got my attention only through the director Mike Judge who made the hit show Silicon Valley and when I got to know he made a satirical film about the modern-day job I had to watch it.

Office Space is about a guy named Peter Gibbons who is a programmer in a company called Initech. He is frustrated and unmotivated every day and the opening scenes are in which he is in his cubicle and here the camera is showcased at a top angle creating this claustrophobic mood. He always avoids confronting his boss, Bill Lumbergh. He has two friends and colleagues at the office and one of them is Michael Bolton and another is Samir. Most of his co-workers hate their jobs. They even go out for coffee because even if they can get coffee at the office they just want to flee and go outside. But one person named Milton likes his job and creates this obsessiveness with his paycheque and stapler but he is also one of those comical and cartoonish side characters you often see in comedy films. He is comical from his appearance to the way he is handled at the office. They keep telling him to relocate his office space leading him to eventually be situated at the basement.

But it is not only at their office that they showcase on how people hate their jobs. Peter is in love with a waitress named Joanna (played by Jennifer Aniston) and there she too gets an argument with her boss on how she must be required to wear a minimum of 15 comical badges called “flairs” and wearing less means less spirit (she gets compared to another waitress who has “45 flairs”). The director creates this parallel that no matter what the  workplace is,  if it is a corporate work house or restaurant it is commonality of people like Peter and Joanna to be present.

Bill is the callous type and he always asks peter “please don’t forget those TPS reports”. Everyday being in this situation makes Peter infuriated. To overcome all of this he is taken to a “occupational psychiatrist”. After doing a little exercise peter becomes “liberated” somehow and the guru falls down from a heart attack. This makes Peter aloof and he doesn’t take anything seriously anymore so he disowns everything. Like not coming on a Saturday because he was asked too or how he wears a casual attire of flip flops and dangling shirt and comes to the office. He even cuts a raw fish in half amongst the TPS reports. He nearly only works 15 minutes each week leading him to these efficiency consultants who have arrived at the office and by noticing all of this comes an ironical situation (watch the film I wont spoil).

The greatest aspects of the Office Space to me are the dialogue and how the characters are designed in a cartoonish manner. This allows for the characters behaviours to be enlarged and not much the small details. What actions they do is magnified. This is a lot similar to Silicon Valley in which they all can be cartoonish characters leading to enlarged and cartoonish behaviours. The dialogues are smart and witty.

There is one particular scene that I would like to give a shoutout to in which it resonated with me so much. The heroes take a baseball bat into the middle of an empty field and thrash a malfunctioning copier machine from their office. Think about it haven’t we all had this kind of feeling once in our life’s?

And another scene at the end where Joanna says “Most people in the world hate their jobs but sometimes we have to go out there and find something that makes us happy”.

Office Space is relatively a small movie when compared to other but does much right in this condensed time and creating a Kafka like situation but with a 180-degree turnaround. Office Space manages to resonate with many in the world and when this film released it was a failure at the box office but when it came out in DVD and digital the movie has become a cult status in America and boomed Mike Judge as a director and rightfully so.

If you like comedies than done miss this one out. I highly recommend it and especially if you have a crappy job.

Trailer Below: