That Movie Book – Week Four

This was another week where we weren’t really in the movie watching mood, but made an effort anyway. I feel a bit bad because of the five films recommended we already owned two of them, and yet we didn’t even watch both of them. It seems that we have a cycle of being really into movie weekends then just want to play computer games all weekend so we do a token effort, then back to “Hell Yeah Movies”.

This Week’s theme was “Don’t Come Monday – the evilest workplaces ever committed to film”. It seems that Marc Fennell was being a bit liberal with his suggestions this week; while he suggested some films based around an awful company and the people that work for it, he mostly suggested films where the evil corporations aren’t the focus. It’s as if he has watched the movies and made a side-note that it would be kinda shit to work for these people, and that is the basis for this week. I feel like I would have been more interested in this theme if it had been more consistent.

So, we spent Friday night watching Office Space. Peter works at a shitty company with strange co-workers, and none of them are appreciated. Life is pretty shit. He goes and gets hypnotherapy, decided not to care about work any more, gets a promotion, co-worker friends get fired, they decide to screw the company over. Also he gets Jennifer Aniston as a girlfriend in there somewhere.

I remember watching Office Space when I was a teenager and just not getting it at all. I didn’t think it was funny; why would anyone think it was funny? It was just dumb. Now I figured I was too young so most of what was funny went over my head. I was right. This was definitely funnier now that I have actual experience in the workforce and am not an idealistic child. The characters were relatable (except for the ones who are intentionally unrelatable), and the storyline was just suitably silly and self aware that you can relax while watching the movie. You don’t have to think too hard about it. After having a few jobs with shitty bosses this movie hit a little close to home, but still made me laugh; I think a lot of people have had the urge to just stop caring about their job and just go through the motions. Or tried to work out  how to I will probably watch it again.

Unfortunately that was it on the movie-watching front. The other movies were Alien, Robocop, Wall-E and Syriana. We own Alien and downloaded Robocop (and are going to buy the Criterion version eventually), but just couldn’t find the enthusiasm to watch them. I might watch them at some other time. I watched Alien for the first time a few years ago and wasn’t overly impressed at the time. It could have been because I wasn’t really in the mood to watch it in the first place, but it seemed like another one of those films that has been built up into this cult classic that I didn’t see originally so it just isn’t that impressive. Feel free to let me know I am wrong if you want.

I am excited about next week, because it is “Disney’s Most Racist Characters”. I’ve been looking forward to that since I first saw it.