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| Office Space |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 89 m |
| Public Rating: 8.46 (95 votes) |
Director: Mike Judge |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy |
Year: 1999 |
| Writer(s): Mike Judge |
| Reviewed by: Arturo García Lasca |
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When I first saw the Poster of this movie I instantly thought it was a complete piece of crap, one of those dumb comedies with really dumb jokes that nobody laughs at; I was wrong. "Office Space" is the kind of comedy that actually has an interesting and original plot that makes the audience care about it, which is quite good because plot-less comedies have a bigger chance of being bad, since they depend only in the jokes.
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is an software engineer who works for a company called 'Initech', and he's just fed up with everything. That's what we see from the beggining, a description of a day in Peter's life, and it's not too pleasant. He gets stuck on the traffic while going to work, then at the office he has several bosses who keep telling him to do things, and even go to work on weekeneds; and there is this machine that doesn't work right and makes everyone who uses it go mad. Peter just has lost his care for everything, including his work, which he totally hates.
After Peter's two best friends, Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael (David Herman) get fired by two guys who were evaluating every Initech's employee's work, Peter and them start a plan to take some money from Initech. I wont say what the plan consists in, it'd be unfair if you haven't seen the film.
There are several different sub-plots, like Peter's relationship with Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), who works at this fast food place and is completely tired of the ridiculous 'pieces of flair' her boss makes her wear. We also get a few laughs from Peter's neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Bader), who can just yell something from his place in order for Peter to hear him; Deppartments are made look really nice here. Peter's obsession with his boss Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) and a supossed relationship he thinks he had with Joanna is pretty funny. Some of Initech's employees are unique too, Tom (Richard Riehle) provides quite a few funny scenes, and Milton's (Stephen Root) talking abilities and manners are really weird.
If you put all this together you have a great film in your hands. "Office Space", written, directed and produced by Mike Judge, was one of the best comedies of 1999, and that's mainly because the plot is actually as important (if not more important) than the comedy itself, and the comedy is based on jokes that while being funny, they aren't stupid or gross.
I personally enjoyed this film a lot mainly because I could identify myself with the Peter charachter, his apathic thoughts were just too cool. That's exactly what I feel like, 'I want to do nothing'.
Peter's indifference, Samir's indian accent, Michael's last name (Bolton), Lumbergh's way of saying "Yeah hi..", Tom's nervousness, Milton's red stapler and some more things are all the factors that could make this movie work. Each character has different problems and they're all great in their own way. I think every actor did a decent job in this film, I have no complaints about the acting, it was more than what was needed. I say all this stuff, but the movie also has some negative aspects, such as being a little bit slow sometimes; the first time I saw it I didn't like it, but the next couple of times it was much better. The film also includes a neat soundtrack (and it's mostly rap!) which makes the scenes look cool. I'd recommend this to anyone, it shows the bad sides of people's lives in a wonderful way, gotta love that.
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