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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 62.24%
Worth A Look: 19.39%
Average: 7.65%
Pretty Bad: 6.63%
Total Crap: 4.08%
7 reviews, 154 user ratings
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Office Space |
by PyThomas
"A comedy that earns its basic pay."

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"I'm gonna burn the whole building down."If you've seen Mike Judge's first foray into animation, you know the origin of that line. Before Beavis and Butt-head first "huh-huh"ed, Judge threw together a bunch of "Office Space" cartoons starring Milton, a hapless white-collar worker who picked his nose a lot and got constantly trodded upon by upper management.
Here, in Office Space The Movie, Mike Judge's first live-action directing effort, Milton is but a supporting character (played hilariously by Stephen Root, and with great accuracy, except we never see his finger anywhere in his nose). The main focus here is on Peter (Ron Livingston), an average Joe with an average engineering job in an average cubicle. He and his buddies, one who has been cursed with the name of Michael Bolton, toil away at the software firm Initech under the command of deadpan-to-the-point-of-absurdity boss Bill Lumbergh (played by Gary Cole).
A somewhat spiritual encounter aided by an ill-fated psychiatrist (a cameo by Mike "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" McShane) drives Peter to take a more laid-back approach to his thankless job, just in time for Initech to hire a consulting firm to cut staff. Once his buddies are targeted for termination, they put together a plan to get even with their company in an embezzlement scheme that goes TOO well.
Also along for the ride is Jennifer Aniston (damn, I forgot the name of the TV show she's in... I know it's real popular, my friends watch it all the time) as a waitress for a Chili/Friday/Bennigan's-type establishment who has work problems of her own. Her boss (Mike Judge taking a cue from Spike Lee and Kevin Smith in acting in his own film) is constantly criticizing her for not wearing enough "flair", those accesorizing throwaway buttons and whatnot on waitstaff's vests. These trivial workplace foibles bring her and frequent-customer Peter together, and their romantic pairing works... sort of.
No, it's not a Dilbert clone, and it doesn't aspire to mimic the popular comic strip, anyway. It's not drop-dead hilarious, either, and the ending seems anticlimactic, but the humor is consistent enough to be worth the seven bucks you paid to see it. Judge does a decent job in his first time out at directing real humans. And there are a few inspired moments that are hysterical, such as the scene where the three schemers take their aggression out on one of the office machines that constantly gave them fits.When it comes to office humor, Mike Judge can certainly hold his own against Scott Adams. And Office Space just may hit home real hard for you if you sit in front of a computer all day and your workspace consists of modular office furniture.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1205&reviewer=9 originally posted: 02/22/99 15:52:38
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SNL Movies: For more in the SNL Movies series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival For more in the 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
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USA 19-Feb-1999 (R) DVD: 01-Nov-2005
UK N/A
Australia 15-Apr-1999 (M)
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