Amazon.com video review:
Ever spend eight hours in a "Productivity Bin"? Ever had worries about
layoffs? Ever had the urge to demolish a temperamental printer or fax
machine? Ever had to endure a smarmy, condescending boss? Then Office
Space should hit pretty close to home for you. Peter (Ron Livingston)
spends the day doing stupefyingly dull computer work in a cubicle. He goes
home to an apartment sparsely furnished by IKEA and Target, then starts for
a maddening commute to work again in the morning. His coworkers in the
cube farm are an annoying lot, his boss is a snide, patronizing jerk, and
his days are consumed with tedium. In desperation, he turns to career
hypnotherapy, but when his hypno-induced relaxation takes hold, there's
no shutting it off. Layoffs are in the air at his corporation, and
with two coworkers (both of whom are slated for the chute) he devises a
scheme to skim funds from company accounts. The scheme soon snowballs,
however, throwing the three into a panic until the unexpected happens and
saves the day. Director Mike Judge has come up with a spot-on look
at work in corporate America circa 1999. With well-drawn characters and
situations instantly familiar to the white-collar milieu, he captures the
joylessness of many a cube denizen's work life to a T. Jennifer Aniston
plays Peter's love interest, a waitress at Chotchkie's, a generic
beer-and-burger joint à la Chili's, and Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey
Show) has a minor but hilarious turn as Peter's mustached, long-haired,
drywall-installin' neighbor. --Jerry Renshaw
