"Yeah. Uh, did you get that memo?" (Review)

I first remember seeing Rob Livingston in Band of Brothers, an HBO special created by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Livingston portrayed Captain Lewis Nixon, a prominent officer attached to Easy Company during World War II. The Band of Brothers mini-series is phenomenal and I was extremely impressed with Livingston’s performance. A couple years before Band of Brothers he portrayed Peter Gibbons in Office Space. I had heard about this movie for a couple years and how it had gained a cult following after its video release. After learning that Stephen Root (NewsRadio, Dodgeball) played a significant role, Shauna and I were convinced we needed to see it. So last night I went to Future Shop and made a rare ‘blind-buy’ of the Special Edition DVD.

If you’ve ever worked in any kind of office setting, particularly in a cubicle environment, you’ll love this movie. Peter works for Initech, a software development company. Like anyone in a cubicle environment, Peter hates his job. He hates his uncaring boss who consistently asks Peter to work weekends and ensure his TPS reports have the correct cover page. He hates reporting to eight different supervisors who all repeat the same requests. He hates having to justify his job to an external consultant hired to help reduce company costs. As Peter describes it, “Every day is the worst day of (his) life.” Persuaded to see a hypnotherapist to help deal with his frustration, Peter finds himself in a completely relaxed and carefree state of mind. At this opportune moment his therapist has a massive heart attack, abruptly ending the session. Remaining in his sedated frame of mind, Peter finds new ways of dealing with work.

Office Space is a comedy most of us can relate to. All the frustrations of office work are hilariously depicted by the film’s many quirky characters. Milton (Stephen Root) is consistently overlooked by his co-workers and continually threatens to take matters into his own hands. This is a role that has be seen and heard in order to truly appreciate its genius. Michael Bolton has to suffer through endless comments about having the same name as that horrible singer. Samir Nagheenanajar must endure having his name mispronounced by everyone around him. Virtually every ‘office environment’ personality is portrayed with hysterical accuracy. When Peter finally adopts his new attitude toward work the film not only gets funnier but becomes something to cheer for. Peter finally does what we’ve only dreamt of doing.

I’m not sure why this film didn’t do so well at the box office. It could have been poor marketing, or it could be that in 1999 Office Space had to share the screen with other popular titles: Star Wars Episode I, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2 and The Matrix, just to name a few. Once released on video, however, word got out and the film became an at-home hit. Who knows why some films do better on video than they do at the box office? I’m not going to try and solve that mystery here. All I can say is that I don’t remember hearing about Office Space until only a couple years ago and now that I’ve finally seen it I think it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve watched in a while.

Office Space is probably the only movie that could have vulgar rap music for the majority of its soundtrack and have it be hilarious. I’m not a rap fan by any means, but I would buy this soundtrack simply because of the visuals it would bring to mind from the film. The lyrics echo the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the film perfectly. It’s brilliant.

Office Space was recently released in a Special Edition (with flair!) DVD, which is the copy I picked up for a mere $14.95. Well worth it. The film was mastered in 1.85:1 Anamorphic video and recorded in Dolby Digital 5.1. The movie is very crisp and sharp. The colours are not incredibly vivid, but I think this is mainly to convey the drab, washed out environment in which the movie is set. The surround sound is perfect for those musical moments but the film is primarily concerned with dialogue. This isn’t the kind of movie that really needs great audio or video, but it’s nice to see that 20th Century Fox took the time to produce a great transfer.

Primarily, this new DVD edition is about the image and audio quality as opposed to many special features. A 20 minute retrospective includes interviews with the director and most of the main actors. It’s an interesting look at how the film and characters were created. There are several pieces of entertaining trivia contained within the feature. There are also 8 deleted scenes, several of which are quite funny, a theatrical trailer, and a gallery of images from the production of the film.

This is a great film to watch with friends, again, particularly if any of you have ever had to endure that kind of workplace. Very entertaining and very funny. I almost never ‘blind-buy’ DVDs but I’m happy to say that I didn’t go wrong with Office Space.

Office Space gets 8 red Swingline staplers (out of 10).

Collated trivia for ‘Office Space’.