| Release Date: |
2/19/99 |
Peter
Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is a computer programmer working
for Initech in Houston. Every day, he and his friends Samir
(Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman as not THAT
Michael Bolton), suffer endless indignities and humiliations
in their soulless workspace from their soulless boss, Bill
Lumbergh (Gary Cole). For Peter, stuck in his cookie-cutter
apartment with paper-thin walls and IKEA furniture, every
day is worse than the one before it � so every day is the
worst of his life. To cap it off, Initech has hired a pair
of "efficiency experts" to downsize the company. One Friday
night, Peter's soon to be ex-girlfriend Anne (Alexandra Wentworth)
forces him to go to an occupational hypnotherapist to relieve
work stress. While Peter is under hypnosis, the therapist
keels over and dies. As he never snaps out of his hypnotic
state, Peter has a new outlook on life. If something annoys
him, he just ignores it or walks away from it. He is completely
relaxed and enjoying life for the first time in a long time.
On Monday, Peter skips work and sleeps in. He gets up for
lunch and drives down to a restaurant next to his office and
asks the waitress he's had a crush on, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston),
on a date. When Peter stops into the office to pick up his
organizer, he's called in to talk to the efficiency experts.
Relaxed and friendly, Peter charms them as he describes everything
wrong with the office, including his boss. Even as Peter now
appears at work only as the mood strikes him, the experts
decide he's management material and give him a promotion even
as they lay off the hardworking Samir and Michael. Peter then
convinces his friends to exact revenge on Initech based upon
an idea from Superman III. Not everything works out quite
as planned. Office Space originated from writer/director Mike
Judge's first animated short of the same name, created in
1991. The short was about Milton (reproduced in the film by
Stephen Root), a damaged office drone whose complaints and
threats about his sufferings go unheeded. � Ron Wells
AMG |
