- The basic idea behind Office Space, stated explicitly in the film, is that every day at a bad job seems like the worst day of your life. This is certainly true for Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), who has one of the most soul-crushing office jobs imaginable. Before even reaching his office, Peter must endure a gridlocked commute, traverse an unreasonably expansive parking lot, and withstand a particularly static-prone doorknob. Once in his cubicle, Peter answers to eight different bosses, the most memorable of whom is Bill Lumburgh (Gary Cole). Lumburgh is a monotone voice in suspenders who always seems to be agreeing with Peter, even when he's asking him to work weekends. In what we assume is a typical morning, Lumburgh and the other bosses take turns informing Peter that he needs to attach a cover letter to his TPS reports, even though he already got that memo. I don't need to know what a TPS report is to appreciate this depiction of a particularly cruel form of bureaucratic torture.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, Peter is surrounded by a remarkably eccentric bunch of characters. At work, his friends Michael Bolton (David Herman) and Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu), both of whom wince when their full names are used, sympathize with Peter's plight. Heart-attack candidate Tom Smykowski (Richard Riehle) alternates between worrying about his job and fondly recalling his one great idea ("a jump-to-conclusions mat"). Milton Waddams (Stephen Root), on the other hand, spends most of his time muttering to himself about various workplace injustices and how he's going to burn the building down. Away from the office, there's Peter's regular waitress and love interest Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) and his hilariously blue-collar neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Bader). Although many of these characters are quite amusing, they are admittedly about as two-dimensional as the cartoon that inspired them.
- In memo form, the plot of Office Space is that Peter is hypnotized into a state of supreme self-confidence before deciding, along with Michael and Samir, to rip off the company "like in Superman 3." Of course, the plot is not the reason to enjoy a film like this. I basically approach Office Space as a series of amusing scenes with shared characters, much like a comic strip. Most of these scenes work incredibly well, like the gangland-style execution of the malfunctioning copy machine, the meetings with the two Bobs (John C. McGinley and Paul Wilson), and any contribution by Gary Cole, Stephen Root, or Diedrich Bader. The occasional dull moments, often indicated by the presence of Jennifer Aniston, are mercifully brief and never awful. Between this film, The Matrix, and Fight Club, 1999 must have been the year of dystopian office jobs. At any rate, Office Space is certainly the least pretentious and most comedic of those three. It is probably also the most enjoyable.
- The director, Mike Judge, appears as the supervisor at Chotchkies.
