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Peter (Ron Livingston) works a job he doesn't care for in a featureless
cubicle in an open space office, and his frustration about work and life
in general is only interrupted at lunch break, when he fancies Joanna
(Jennifer Aniston), waitress at the burger place he goes to, from afar.
The though he goes to hypno-therapy with his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Anne
(Alexandra Wentworth), and the therapist (Michael McShane) who puts him
under dies before he can release him again, and from here on Peter is the
most relaxed and carefree person imaginable - so carefree that he arrives
to his job appraisal hours late, and with his new attitude he manages to
impress the outside consultants (John C. McGinley, Paul Wilson) so much
that he gets a promotion. He also finally finds the guts to ask Joanna out
on a date, and before you know it, they're a couple. And suddenly his life
is pretty good - if it wasn't for the fact that his best friends at work,
Michael (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu), actually much harder
workers than him, are fired. So he comes up with a Superman III
inspired foolproof plan, to funnel all the money that's left in the air by
rounding off to a special account the three of them have access too. Now
between the three of them, manipulating the company software is no issue
at all - and now all's set for them to have a carefree life in utter
wealth, and as a bonus, Peter can stick it to Lumbergh (Gary Cole), the
boss he always hated. There's just one thing, due to a programming glitch,
much more money is funneled to their account than originally intended, so
much that someone's bound to notice ... What really works for Office
Space is that Peter's initial situation will ring true with most of us
to a degree, and his journey is really wish-fulfillment for the audience.
That said, Office Space is not a perfect film, its story arc is
somewhat underdeveloped, not all characters and subplot seem sufficiently
developed (which is especially the case with Jennifer Aniston's character
and story), and the humour is often hit-or-miss. The real saving grace of
the movie though is that when it's good it's really good and even
when it's meh, it isn't dumbed down. So in all, no masterpiece but very
entertaining nevertheless.
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