I used to love this movie but now it just feels like, idk it's extremely Cishet for lack of a better term, like its made for a very specific audience that i'm no long a part of.
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Yeeeeeeeah... about Office Space...
- Thread starter Ostron
- Start date
LOL, they weren't married...he says the squirrels were merry.
That's a decent movie but I haaaaaate how often people will say in reaction to bad or stupid things "We really are living in Idiocracy." What? We've imaged a black hole! We've made incredible strides in science, medicine, technology and our understanding of the universe. Just because there is and always has been a faction of the population that revels in its dumbness, doesn't mean our entire society is like that.
OP
OP
The jokes aimed at his surname come across as really lazy, but I don't really remember much beyond that which really tied into ethnicity? Michael Bolton's issue gets a lot more development though. Coworkers continually mispronouncing/spelling names and getting hung up on terrible jokes they won't shut up about, and you can't escape from, is extremely relatable.
That's a really good takeaway, I think!
I agree that office culture is the bad guy and I think that's why the movie loses its focus after the initial set-up. Peter doesn't just rebell against the office, he rebells against having to get up in the morning, having to pay bills, having to conform to what others want and not just what he wants. Then the ending wraps it up like "oh he wanted to be tied to a job, and not be in charge of his time, and have a boss, and pay his bills, he just wanted some exercise to go with it!", it's a lame ending. I don't think it fits the character or the arc, and I still think the heist plot is convoluted and wasteful.
Now that would explain a lot. And to be clear I'm not distressed about the bad guys getting away, I think the plot gets distracted and loses them. They do all this setup and forget to have some sort of payoff, either showing that they win or lose. It makes the movie feel unfocused. I would've been fine with the bad guys winning as well as it could've meant more time in the office and a representation of the office as the Kafka-esque hellscape that it is. Maybe use the Orson Welles version of The Trial ending and have Peter blow himself up with dynamite rather than be suffocated by the realities of life.
That's a shame, as I hope it comes through that I really like the set up in this movie.
I've got one of those staplers on my desk right now.
The obfuscated joke was that there was no red Swingline stapler at the time. It was custom-painted by the prop department, so it was unique, and that's why he was obsessed with it.
According to the DVD special features, it's "married." It's Milton politely saying that he saw the squirrels having sex.
I enjoy it, it was never a 10/10 for me but always been a solid 7+. I've never worked in an office, but it always reminded me of a lot of people in retail, and like the protagonist, I switched to construction and was much happier despite still experiencing some of that same existential dread occasionally. The printer scene was always so relatable because inevitably at every job there's been some finicky piece of shit tool or equipment that never works properly and you'd just love to obliterate.
The biggest thing that ages it is the attitude that cubicles are a bad thing. Whereas anyone who has suffered through the modern day open plan office can attest that a scrap of separation between you and your colleagues - while still being open enough to allow easy communication - would be most welcome.
Yeah this has been my thoughts on it for years and it still hasn't changed. Corporate bullshit continues on and on.
When did the current corporate setup become popular anyway? The early 1980s? I know Dilbert started in the late 80s.
Fun fact: Use keys (while holding with bare skin) or a ring on your finger to discharge it over a much larger area. You won't feel anything.
This is the scene that really grew with me as I worked an office job over the years. Not because there was a door handle that shocked me every day. But the idea that something so small and insignificant can seem like the worst thing in the world when you deal with it _every_ _single_ _day_, year after year
The movie is dated in a lot of ways, but ask any of my co-workers and they'll tell you a number of scenes are still relevant today. Especially the printer scene. >_>;
I'm going to pop into Primark and go up their escalator with keys in my hand to test this (not that I disbelieve you) because that is the ONLY thing that zaps me every time - nothing else has given me a zap for at least a decade.
I thought it aged alright, but you've got a point about the overall premises or theme or whatever being pretty muddled once it gets to the heist stuff and resorting to 'blue collar' work
what i liked about Extract is it captured the "work place" slice of life stuff but pared it back to simply being about a comedy about a middle aged dude at the forefront
what i liked about Extract is it captured the "work place" slice of life stuff but pared it back to simply being about a comedy about a middle aged dude at the forefront
I don't think there'll ever be a time when printers don't suck.
This always reminds me of a receptionist who worked at a very large multinational company. She wasn't always on the intercom but when she did, when she was calling someone to come to reception, she'd always say it in a very particular and odd way.
"Jane Doe, please come to receeeption. Jane Doe, receeeption".
If I had to type out her pronunciation it would be something like - ree-SAY-pshun. I've never heard anyone before or since say it anything like that.
Printers are the bane of all IT. Nobody knows why they won't work. Nobody knows why they won't connect. Nobody knows why they suddenly stopped working. But everyone, customers and technicians alike, wants to recreate that Office Space scene.
And what's really funny is Falling Down did it first, but included murder as part of the crimes of the guy whose mundane life breaks him psychologically.
I joke about my office with references to Office Space. It is still 100% relevant in today's world.
I think it's a great movie, but it's a 90s movie that isn't made anymore and it's very much a 90s movie so analyzing it in a serious way 25+ years later is as much a reflection of how we've changed as it is about the movie itself. Like everything Mike Judge does there's some things in the movie, little vignettes, that really capture the essence of something, while the rest of the details might age differently.
I think it's a movie that was much bigger culturally in ~2009 than it was in 1999, as people who might have first seen it when they were 16 or 17 end up becoming 26 or 27 year old office workers and then thinking like, "wow, this movie really got it."
This is really good commentary, but it's as much commentary on today and movies today than it is commentary on Office Space or 90s movies. You're right in that it probably was a 20-minute napkin idea, but that's when 20-minute napkin ideas were feature length films. And now those obviously don't exist anymore (or to the same degree). Today people would expect the main character to unionize and lead their colleagues against the corporate overlord, but in the late 90s, the "slackers" characters have become "ugh, I guess I have to join the rat race like everybody else" characters, and it was still in the peak of anti-labor in the US so he idea of labor being something other than a complete joke, a laugh-line, in the era of Reaganism would have been way out of touch with how people genuinely felt. The Big Lebowski came out in 1998, Office Space came out in 1999, and I think those are good examples of two paths of early 90s slackerism ... One (The Dude) epitomizing peak slacker, the other (Peter Gibbons) becomes the more realistic epitome of the slacker ... accepting his corporate fate but carving out a part for himself in it.
I think in the 90s the comedy hero could be the person who drops out of the system, rebels against the system by not being a part of it, and today, the expectations are different, you can't drop out of the system and be a hero, you have to be transform the system to be the hero.
I think it's a movie that was much bigger culturally in ~2009 than it was in 1999, as people who might have first seen it when they were 16 or 17 end up becoming 26 or 27 year old office workers and then thinking like, "wow, this movie really got it."
This is really good commentary, but it's as much commentary on today and movies today than it is commentary on Office Space or 90s movies. You're right in that it probably was a 20-minute napkin idea, but that's when 20-minute napkin ideas were feature length films. And now those obviously don't exist anymore (or to the same degree). Today people would expect the main character to unionize and lead their colleagues against the corporate overlord, but in the late 90s, the "slackers" characters have become "ugh, I guess I have to join the rat race like everybody else" characters, and it was still in the peak of anti-labor in the US so he idea of labor being something other than a complete joke, a laugh-line, in the era of Reaganism would have been way out of touch with how people genuinely felt. The Big Lebowski came out in 1998, Office Space came out in 1999, and I think those are good examples of two paths of early 90s slackerism ... One (The Dude) epitomizing peak slacker, the other (Peter Gibbons) becomes the more realistic epitome of the slacker ... accepting his corporate fate but carving out a part for himself in it.
I think in the 90s the comedy hero could be the person who drops out of the system, rebels against the system by not being a part of it, and today, the expectations are different, you can't drop out of the system and be a hero, you have to be transform the system to be the hero.
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I like your write up OP but holy shit does this sound boring. Sounds like a better pamphlet than a movie.
Just double-checked the subtitles and you're correct. My life is a lie. Thanks for the correction.
I also checked the shooting script and that line isn't in there at all :P
The ending is literally him declining an offer to return to a white collar corporate office job and taking on a blue collar job instead.
The annoying frat boy who is only in a couple of scenes but when he does the O face, it just fuckin sends me everytime.
Office Space was not funny before I had an office job. As I entered the workforce each return viewing it grew on me. But I'd hazard as the nature of office jobs change it'll become less funny to newly minted drones. But we're still in the heyday of it's relevance to corporate culture. (Here's hoping one day it isn't relevant at all... for the good reason... not the many possible bad reasons...)
Setting aside the legitimately questionable stuff in it, like accidental support for eugenics that Judge has looooong since disowned (albeit clumsily), there's an engaging story there, a striking satirical setting that clearly stuck out to people (which is why the SarahZ video insisting that Idiocracy had no cultural cache outside of Brawndo jokes is fucking wild...especially in a video about why the present day wasn't like Idiocracy), and some really good performances and jokes.
I like the movie in spite of its many flaws.
This is funny written down, but the delivery elevates it in a major way.
It's because it's no longer fiction. It's reality now.
Also, it has what plants crave.
Yeah, but being able to say "huh, that movie got a lot of things right" doesn't inherently mean the movie is terribly good haha
OP
OP
In 2017, we had a fax machine running because it was supposedly "more secure" for the kinds of transfers we did (if you don't do encrypted email). In 2018 it broke down because the operator did something to mess up our number and I kid you not, for the whole year we bothered our senior tech guy about it. He in turn bugged someone at headquarters to get it fixed, and they referred back to the operator and round and round it went. At some point we kept asking our tech guy about the fax machine as a running joke.
Then in 2019, my colleague put the fax machine on a cart and ran it down a long corridor where we had storage. It sat there for about a year, nobody asked about it except for the occasional hospital wanting to send something over. The tech guy didn't ask, and we still had the fax number on all our print outs. Sometime around 2020 it was just gone, but the number is still there to this day. I sent my colleague the printer scene from Office Space and she hadn't seen it before, a true hero.
That is true and actually having your own space without needing to scrounge around with your laptop for a place to sit at the start of the day.
I haven't seen that... in fact, I haven't seen anything by Mike Judge past Idiocracy apart from some very good Beavis and Butt-Head shorts on youtube.
Yeah I agree with all of this, it would've been very unrealistic to have someone gather support for unionization in this environment in 1999. I don't however think it is wrong to not expect a more coherent plot. I think Dumb & Dumber has a coherent plot about slacker characters where they and the people around them behave in a consistent and (within reason) believable way.
Maybe one issue is that Office Space sees itself as a comedy and it's a happy ending where the guy gets the girl, I wonder what the previously mentioned "darker" version would've been. Maybe merging the characters of Peter and Milton would've been a path, because realistically I think that's what would've happened to the "straight shooter". He thinks he's doing good but instead gets more and more meaningless punishments from the higher ups until he snaps and "something happens". It also would've kept us in the office world as Milton and Lumbergh is our view into that space as the heist takes place. That could've kept the joke machine going with the relatable office incidents but for the main character.
I mentioned Orson Welles's The Trial before but the more I think about it the more parallels I see, in The Trial you have the striking imagery of the "office space" in the endless rows of typists, the executioners "passing the knife around" (letting go of Milton), and Milton seeing continuous harassment for a "crime" he's unaware of where he can't find meaning until he burns the whole thing down. That could just be my view of the office space from doing governmental work where nothing makes sense and most things are meaningless but I often turn to Kafka to cope with everyday work...
... maybe I'm coming around to the ending with Peter sacrificing part of himself by still working but doing something he enjoys more. I guess it could've been fine to me if he didn't enjoy it quite as much, or if it was acknowledged as defeat before the meaningless grind until death. I escaped one workplace where I'd just cancel all my appointments and play Luftrausers all day because I was bored out of my mind by what I was doing (AND NOTHING HAPPENED WHEN I DID), the next job was fine and invigorating... for a while, but then it came creeping back in other ways. Therefore I have trouble seeing it as a proper ending if one must imagine Peter happy doing what he does, or maybe I can see it as the death of his character because he couldn't break free and I can just be happy with it that way. In either case I still think the heist plot is dumb, but this has been a fun journey so far!
I have done some killer pamphlets but no movies so I think your assessment is spot on!
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By the way, do we know if the scene where Peter tries to bail early on a friday is a direct homage to The Matrix or just coincidence? Because I think the movie version of my pamphlet is just Peter saying this to Initech:
"I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."... before flying away at the end.
For me, Office Space is a movie that is funnier to think about, rather than watch it. I just remember my favorite jokes (probably better than they actually are), have a chuckle, and remain content with never watching again. The same rule applies for Will Farrell and Owen Wilson movies.
i feel like you're vastly over thinking it.
Adults can make adult decisions and either decide to forgive someone after they apologized, or they can not.
The point was for Peter, doing construction was better than his office job.
TBH i can kind of relate, at least a construction worker can look at whatever they did and say I helped build that. Or any other actual useful type of profession like paramedics, firemen, can say i saved someones life or i helped someone who got hurt etc.
Office jobs can be soul sucking, which is the point of the movie, and several other movies of the same era. Often times can feel pointless and unfulfilling as well.
...he apologized. it wasn't even really about her being a slut, but he thought she slept with his asshole of a boss.
Adults can make adult decisions and either decide to forgive someone after they apologized, or they can not.
I think you missed the point.
The point was for Peter, doing construction was better than his office job.
TBH i can kind of relate, at least a construction worker can look at whatever they did and say I helped build that. Or any other actual useful type of profession like paramedics, firemen, can say i saved someones life or i helped someone who got hurt etc.
Office jobs can be soul sucking, which is the point of the movie, and several other movies of the same era. Often times can feel pointless and unfulfilling as well.