Labor Day weekend inspires many of Americans to take a moment and reflect on why they’re glad they’re not at work. In fact, it’s the perfect time to bust out one of your favorite office movies to celebrate. There’s something so appealing about the ordinary hero who finally decides to “stick it to the man.” Many of these off-beat films failed to capture top earning numbers at the box office, but later established “cult classic” status as the buzz grew and movies online circulated.
Office Space is considered the king of office movies. This 1999 hit film satirizes life at a software company in the nineties. The story’s protagonist, Peter Gibbons, decides to stop going to work just as the company is downsizing, which makes him even more intriguing and desirable to his bosses. When his friends get fired, they decide to create a computer virus that will siphon off money into their bank accounts. Other characters include Milton — the quiet eccentric who is perpetually disgruntled and whose desk is always getting moved; Lumbergh — the ever-irritating boss whose expressions and mannerisms drive workers up the wall; and a string of characters who talk about having “a case of the Mondays” and lust after their coworkers. Despite its sluggish box office sales, Office Space went on to become one of the most-purchased movies online, with more than 2.6 million DVDs sold for home theater viewing.
In American Beauty (1999), another one of the beloved office movies, Lester Burnham (played by Kevin Spacey) decides he’s had it with his pathetic job and life. After quitting his job during a dramatic scene, he returns home to nonchalantly say, “I blackmailed [my boss] for almost sixty thousand dollars. Pass the asparagus.” The goal, of course, is to find a way to negotiate a handsome severance so you can still survive without working, which Lester does. For the most part, this twisted saga is more about life at home than at the office, but even so, there’s something about this film that will appeal to the office movie lover and that puts it among the top movies.
Office movies often have epic moments of open defiance, which appeals to us most. It’s hard not to love when Lester Burnham (American Beauty) negotiates a severance package with his boss, saying, “Then I guess I’ll have to throw in a sexual harassment charge….” As Burnham says, “I’m just an ordinary guy who has nothing left to lose.” Audiences also love Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club when he decides he doesn’t care about his job anymore and goes to work faxing off personal memos for Project Mayhem. When his boss discovers these files, the narrator warns him, “Well, I gotta tell you: I’d be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that… is dangerous. And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you’ve known for years. Someone very, very close to you.” So this year when you’re looking to buy movies that center around office rebellion, consider these classics.
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