Written by Old Bluffer 29th Feb 2008

Peter Gibbons works in a dead end job at Initech. He has eight bosses and sits in a soulless cubicle next to Milton, a freak with a stapler obsession and Nina, who spends her entire day loudly shrilling her unchanging telephone greeting.

Peter invariably has to work weekends, and even when he goes to bed he can still hear the incessant, irritating sound of Nina in his head:

"Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment."

To top it all off, he has good reason to suspect that his girlfriend, Anne, is cheating on him. His relationship with Anne isn't going well, and she has booked an appointment for him to see a hypnotherapist, one Dr. Swanson (played by Mike McShane).

Anne has taken Peter to see Dr Swanson to "help" him, but really this is just a bitchy ruse to tell him that everything bad in their relationship is All His Fault.

"So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life."

Dr. Swanson is soothingly sympathetic to Peter's office woes, and puts him into a hypnotic trance, where the stresses of modern life are meaningless.


Swanson uses his famed "marijuana" trance skills.

However, the Doctor's massive bulk shows that he may have behavioural disorders of his own, and his heart is about to pay the price.


Mike McShane looks more like a Voodoo shaman here than a hypnotist!

As Peter drifts off into a blissful trance, Swanson becomes visibly agitated and uncomfortable. Beads of sweat form on his brow, his limbs tremble, his eyes roll upwards and he topples, hugely, onto the floor.

As the rest of the people in his clinic flap about in shock at the gargantuan corpse at their feet, Peter remains calm. He has achieved a perfect Zen moment, and the futility of modern life has become crystal clear to him. As he tells his colleagues later:

"It's not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It's about all of us. I don't know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don't know, maybe it was just shock and it's wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die - Michael, we don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements."



This new perspective on life triggers the main plot of the movie, which is far too enjoyable for me to spoil for you here. Suffice to say, if you've ever worked in a crappy office job you need to go and watch this film. You'd think it would have aged really badly, but if anything, the reverse is true. A truly glorious movie that is even funnier on repeat viewings.




No Office Space review could be complete without a photo of Milton and his Red Swingline stapler.