Office Space (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	85:38
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Mike Judge
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Ron Livingston Jennifer Aniston Ajay Naidu David Herman Gary Cole Stephen Root Richard Riehle Alexandra Wentworth Joe Bays John C. McGinley Diedrich Bader Paul Willson Kinna McInroe
Case	?
RPI	$19.80	Music	John Frizzell Ice Cube

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired Dutch French Italian German Spanish Swedish Finnish Danish Norwegian French Titling Italian Titling German Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     There's something about satirical comedy don't you think? Finding that knife edge between comedy and comment is incredibly elusive. In Office Space, they do get there a fair number of times. For anyone who's endured the ludicrous environment of office "Cubeland", there'll be plenty to recognise here, both in the characters portrayed and the situations they find themselves in.

     We meet our antihero, Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) who, along with his computer programmer mates, Michael Bolton - no relation (David Herman) and Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu) are stuck in dead-end jobs under threat of "efficiency consultants" and a completely sleazy boss, Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole). After a disastrous hypnosis session, Peter has a eureka experience and decides he simply will no longer work. He'll continue to turn up - he just won't work.

     Ironically, the more he malingers, the more he's seen as management material by the idiotic consultants. To add further insult, his more industrious buddies are slated to be on the hit list of the company's next redundancy round. So the three lads hatch a cunning plan of revenge, but nothing goes exactly to plan.

     The concept for this film came from a series of animated shorts called Milton, and was created by the makers of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill - and this heritage does show. There were times when it feels as though the film could have benefited from a tighter edit but overall, it's not a bad little movie, with some genuinely funny moments. There are hints of The Office, and, strangely, for me, there were times when it looked like a less maniacal, corporatised version of Brazil. When it worked, it really worked quite well. When it didn't, well, it was just a case of waiting for the next good bit. Not an über film, perhaps, but not an entirely unworthy one either.

Video

     The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 16x9 enhanced.

     The luminance was generally excellent, with no low level noise, good shadow detail and fine grain properties.

     Colours were well rendered with great skin tones and a clean, broad palette.

     Apart from the usual aliasing suspects, MPEG and film artefacts were kept to a minimum.

     Subtitles were clean, accurate and legible.

     I detected no layer change on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     There are five audio tracks on this DVD. They are all 5.1 surround presentations in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. I listened to the English track.

      Dialogue was generally clean and clear and audio sync presented no problems.

     The musical score by John Frizzell was an eclectic affair with hip-hop and other musical genres all collaged together. Generally, it worked quite well, but didn't particularly provide a strong presence in the film.

    The surround channels were appropriately used with the subwoofer making infrequent but effective appearances.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu was silent and static and easy to navigate.

Theatrical Trailer

     2.23 - a fairly accurate representation of the film.

     There appears to be no difference between the R1 and the R4 versions of this DVD.

     It doesn't work all the time, but when it does, it's excruciatingly clever. Presented with a pretty decent transfer, this is a film that deserves to be seen.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall