MY MOVIE SHELF: Office Space

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 177  Days to go: 179

Movie #200:  Office Space

Back when Mike Judge was mostly known for animation like Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, and back before Ron Livingston was Berger, breaking up with Carrie Bradshaw via post-it note on Sex and the City, there was Office Space. Office Space is the ultimate white-collar workplace fantasy film. But it’s not a fantasy about having a perfect job, it’s a fantasy about being able to shove it, to tell off your boss, to vent your frustrations, to pull one over on the whole damn company.

You see, there are these tiny little fractions of a penny …. Wait. Let me back up.

Livingston plays Peter Gibbons, a dissatisfied drone at some faceless tech company that’s a carbon copy of every other tech company in the area. In actuality, it’s a carbon copy of every other office, even The Office, both the US and the UK versions. It’s an Every Office, with its bland cubicle walls and its impersonal decor, with its bureaucracies and its redundancies and its idiosyncratic routines. There are multiple annoying bosses, a bunch of cloying goody-goodys, and way too many inappropriate jerkwads. None of the printers work. All the door handles are brimming with static electricity. The goddamn fluorescent lights buzz. Honestly, the place deserves to be burned to the ground.

Of course, Peter can’t burn the place down. He’s the good guy, ostensibly. That’s why it’s so awesome this office has a nut job, and Milton (Stephen Root) is his name-o. Milton was told he could listen to his radio at a reasonable level. Milton still hasn’t received his paycheck. Milton always has to pass the cake. Milton doesn’t want to be moved into the basement. And Milton sure as hell doesn’t appreciate you taking his stapler. That’s a red Swingline, for God’s sake.

Peter is in this dead-end job, trudging through his dead-end relationship with his dead-end girlfriend, when things start to happen. He and his girlfriend break up, so he works up the nerve to ask out the waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) from the local TGIFridays-ish establishment. Joanna makes him feel alive again. And he realizes the thing that was making him so unhappy for so long was his job. He doesn’t quit, though. No, instead of quitting, he sabotages it. He shows up late, he doesn’t adhere to dress code, he doesn’t come in on weekends, he leaves early, he deconstructs his cubicle so he can see out the window for once, and when two “efficiency consultants” come in to see who they can fire to save the company costs, Peter tanks the interview spectacularly.

This is a workplace fantasy, however, not a film about the grim realities of corporate competition and pressure to make the grade, so Peter’s confession of his “screw it” attitude gets him a promotion instead of a severance package. He’s a straight-shooter. A go-getter. A real asset. But his two work buddies Michael “Not That One” Bolton (David Herman) and Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu) (it really isn’t all that hard to pronounce!) are set to be laid off and replaced with cheaper resources straight out of college. They’ll be completely screwed. So Peter finds a way for them to screw the company back, and that’s by rounding off these tiny little fractions of pennies from various online transactions and siphoning them into a separate account. Nobody will ever notice and in two years’ time, they’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There’s just one small glitch: Instead of taking years, the plan only took a weekend and that money was sure to be missed.

Who hasn’t wanted to help yourself to a little extra, though? You’ve earned it.

Who hasn’t wanted to tell their own personal Lumbergh (Gary Cole) to go jump in a lake? The smug bastard.

Who hasn’t wanted to kick the ever-loving shit out of a printer? “PC Load Letter” doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Who hasn’t wanted to burn the place down once or twice?

“Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.”

MY MOVIE SHELF: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 288  Days to go: 277

Movie #89: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

“Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?”

Dodgeball is a really funny movie that holds up to multiple viewings. Pondering why this might be today as I watched, I realized pretty quickly that it’s because Dodgeball is positively stacked with jokes. Jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Whatever your style of jokes preference is, Dodgeball has a joke for you.

Dry joke partisans will appreciate Vince Vaughn as Peter LaFleur, playing the straight, low-key guy against all the craziness around him. With the pop of an eyebrow and a one-liner at the ready, LaFleur is the king of the wry observation. Given Vaughn’s history of being both inclined to and in danger of taking things overboard, putting him in this role successfully reins him in and uses him to the movie’s best advantage. As a complement to Vaughn is Christine Taylor as Kate Veatch, a tough girl, a baller athlete and a consummate professional, she puts everyone in their places with cutting remarks. It’s the kind of stuff keen observers and dry wits appreciate.

Those looking for absurdist comedy, however, won’t be disappointed either. Dodgeball is practically bursting with it. From the cheerleading Donkeys to the Average Joe’s carwash, to the entire concept of a Dodgeball tournament, the whole film is silly and goofy and weird. There are also characters Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn) and Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk), whose entire existence is bizarre, not to mention the steaming ball of crazy named White Goodman (played by steaming ball of crazy Ben Stiller). White is a treasure trove of wackadoo, self-abusing (literally and figuratively) with food, obsessing over his appearance and throwing his nonexistent weight around in the biggest (haha) Napoleonic complex you’ve ever seen.

White is also constantly misusing idioms and mangling language, which is intellectual humor at its finest. Another great intellectual joke? There is a chest full of money at the end literally labeled “Deus Ex Machina.” These are the jokes not everybody gets, but the people who do love them all the more for their obscurity. Stiller is unsubtle enough with his stuff that it’d be hard to miss here, but it’s still pretty artfully and smartly done. White’s use of a deep, raspy voice when he wants to sound profound is hilarious, especially when what he actually says is nonsense. And yet, White’s surplus of funny doesn’t stop there.

Physical comedy fans have a lot to look forward to in Dodgeball, and White Goodman’s performance of “Milkshake” over the end credits is a major highlight. It’s not the only one, though. Stephen Root is a delight as awkward, dorky Gordon, and I’ve long been a fan of Justin Long’s hapless earnestness (or earnest haplessness). Long, especially, has been a favorite of mine since his turn in the TV show Ed, and here, playing the character Justin, he’s just as lovable, just as jittery, and just as uncomfortable in his skin. His cheerleading routines and his workout attempts are great, but him getting hit in the head with that wrench (“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”) is gold. Another skilled purveyor of physical comedy is Missi Pyle, who is always willing, in every role she’s ever taken, to completely forsake her own vanity for the good of a role. She’s like Melissa McCarthy and Anna Faris in that way, only she gets far less recognition for it. Here, Pyle stars as Fran, some Eastern European Slavic athlete with a fierce unibrow and jacked-up teeth. With a deep voice and a terrifying mole, she’s the scariest player on any team.

The place Dodgeball really shines, though, is as a sports parody. Not just a sports movie parody — though it does touch on the clichés of the passionate coach, the intense training montages, the underdog victories, the noble cause, the huge setback, playing with The Force, and the motivational speech — but a parody on all aspects of sports. There are the Dodgeball Dancers, the hilarious fan signs in the crowd (“Joe’s Knows Balls.”), ESPN 8 “the Ocho,” the tagline “Go Balls Deep,” the intricate and confusing rules, the silly little red penalty rope the ref dangles in front of White for a warning, the overblown introductions of all the teams, and the two commentators played by Gary Cole (as the play-by-play man) and Jason Bateman (in a huge and fabulous departure from the kinds of roles he usually plays, as the flighty, rockstar color commentator). Cole is gloriously self-serious, dropping brilliant lines about the Helsinki championship of 1919 and the perfect, “Do you believe in unlikelihood?!” Meanwhile, Bateman is distracted and cavalier, making the kind of useless and nonsensical comments any sports fan knows aren’t too far off the mark from the things real commentators say.  (Watch a game sometime — any game. You’ll see what I mean.)

I first saw Dodgeball in the theater with my brother — one of the few times we’ve hung out together, just the two of us, given our big age difference and the substantial geographical distance between us — and it’s a memory I really treasure because of that. I always think of him when I watch it, but I also enjoy the movie on its merits. Those merits being lots and lots and lots of jokes. I always appreciate funny.

“Fuckin’ Chuck Norris.”