Inspired by his Milton animated skits written for Saturday Night Live in the early 90's, it tells the tale of work-place angst and shows us the true meaning of relaxation. Released in February of 1999, Mike Judge's second feature film follows Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) who is seeking a way to escape his mundane existence where his wife is cheating on him, he hates his job, and generally hates life. But when he is in a couple's hypno-thereapy session, Peter gets hypnotized. Before the therapist can snap Peter out of it, he dies leaving Peter in a state of pure nirvana. Peter is reborn, living life the way he wants; not going to work when he doesn't feel like it, going fishing, and just relaxing. Even amid millennium layoffs at his company, Peter lives how he wants to. The ironic bit is his work improves with this new style and he goes as far as getting promoted. His promotion comes at the expense of the firing of his friends Samir, who is enraged by his treatment at work and the constant mispronunciation of his name ("it sounds exactly how it looks, Nagheenanajar") and Micheal Bolton, his want to be gangster-despite-the-fact-he's-a-software-code-ecryptor friend who is enraged by the fact everyone who comes by points out his name is the exact name of jazz musician Michael Bolton ("the name was fine until the assbag came along and ruined it."). They conjure a plan to steal fractions of pennies from the company's bank transactions, only to find the next day Micheal missed a decimal and they have instead stolen over $300,000.
The brilliance in Office Space is it's a true escapist film. Everyone can relate to Office Space wheter they think so or not. Be it school, an office of anything in life, there are times you just want to get away. Peter lives out this fantasy, but Mike Judge shows us consequence. This makes Office Space a classic. It takes us on this dream fantasy where we don't show up work when we don't want, bit still get promoted. The entire third act of the film is the ripple effect of consequences by Peter care free attitude and now his friends are suffering consequence too. Peter loses his friends, his new girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) and is burdened with the stress of thinking he has to now go to prison. It all turns out fine in the end when Peter returns the $300,000 check and a confession note exempting Samir and Micheal and taking full blame. The building is burned down overnight by another disgruntled employee (the memorable Milton) because "They took my stapler." Office Space's story is backed by great casting in Ron Livingston (Who went on to star in Band Of Brothers), Jennifer Aniston (who was already an established star due to Friends), David Herman (who joined MadTV) and of course Stephen Root (of King of The Hill and Dodgeball fame) as Milton and Gary Cole (Very Brady Movie and Talledaga Nights) as the classic Bill Lumburgh with the now infamous line "Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and have to ask you to come in on Saturday." Office Space has had new life on home video, selling over 4 million copies and attracting millions of viewers to it's TV showings. Filled with classic moments, from Peter forgetting the cover on his TPS Reports and being told six times he forgot by six diffrent people, to the destruction of the "PC Load Letter" copy machine in the middle of a field set to Geto Boys, Office Space is truly a classic and was on of the first films to kick off a great year in Cinema.
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