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Title: Office Space (1999)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Ron Livingston | ... | Peter | |
| Jennifer Aniston | ... | Joanna | |
| David Herman | ... | Michael Bolton | |
| Ajay Naidu | ... | Samir | |
| Diedrich Bader | ... | Lawrence | |
| Stephen Root | ... | Milton | |
| Gary Cole | ... | Bill Lumbergh | |
| Richard Riehle | ... | Tom Smykowski | |
| Alexandra Wentworth | ... | Anne | |
| Joe Bays | ... | Dom Portwood | |
| John C. McGinley | ... | Bob Slydell | |
| Paul Willson | ... | Bob Porter | |
| Kinna McInroe | ... | Nina | |
| Todd Duffey | ... | Chotchkie's Waiter | |
| Greg Pitts | ... | Drew | |
In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job and the obnoxious Division VP Bill Lumbergh who has just hired two efficiency consultants to downsize the company. His best friends are two software engineers Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, that also hate Initech, and his intrusive next door neighbor Lawrence. He believes his girlfriend Anne is cheating on him but she convinces Peter to visit the hypnotherapist Dr. Swanson. Peter tells how miserable his life is and Dr. Swanson hypnotizes him and he goes into a state of ecstasy. However, Dr. Swanson dies immediately after giving the hypnotic suggestion to Peter. Peter, in his new state, starts to date the waitress Joanna and changes his attitude which results in his being promoted by the consultants. When he discovers that Michael and Samir will be downsized, they decide to plant a virus in the banking system to embezzle fraction of cents on each financial operation into Peter's account. However Michael commits a ... Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Every aggravating thing about working in an office, from the traffic on the way to work to that damn copier, is in this movie, and dealt with in ways that we've all wanted to, at some point or another. Well, except for the traffic, of course. The traffic remains undefeated. Besides telling a highly amusing story about office workers who are just fed up with it all, Office Space is full of other little comments on society, such as the way the film points out the sheer goofiness of geeky white guys who listen to hardcore rap music. The film presents a heavily exaggerated version of the typical office, but underneath that exaggeration, the depiction is very accurate. You have the fairly timid but passive aggressive superior, Bill Lumbergh, portrayed hilariously by Gary Cole, the repressive office cubicles, the mumbly guy that kind of weirds everyone out, and of course, the disillusioned office employee who just doesn't care anymore.
Ron Livingston fulfills this last role very well, being very open about his dislike of his job and his intentions to do as little as possible for as long as he still gets paid, but it is the weird guy that really gets laughs consistently, whose name, in this case, is Milton. This guy's hilarious situation involves having been laid off years before without knowing because no one told him, because he still receives a paycheck due to a glitch in the payroll system, and whose primary concerns seem to be the location of his cubicle, his red stapler, and the fact that last year, he didn't receive a piece of cake at the office party. The way that this guy's situation gets consistently worse and the way that he is pushed further and further toward the edge of sanity is one of the funniest things about this movie. And we can't forget the Indian guy, Samir, whose grammatically flawed exclamations also provide for an endless source of comedic entertainment.
Jennifer Aniston plays a small role as Peter Gibbons' (Livingston) love interest, as well as that of a waitress who is also sick and tired of the ridiculousness of her job (such as a specified minimum of pieces of `flair' that employees must wear to work). Ron's home life is another thing that is parodied in this high quality comedy, as the shortcomings of living in an average apartment are clearly and side-splittingly portrayed. Clearly, the office scenes are by far the funniest of the film, and the eventual criminal plot to embezzle a huge sum of money from the company and take up a lifestyle of not really doing anything, despite the fact that it is also very well done, can be largely overlooked because of the sheer hilarity of the rest of the film. This is excellent stuff from the famous creator of the endlessly amusing Beavis & Butt-Head who, with Office Space, has further proved that he is just the type of guy who knows what's funny.