Office Space (1999)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Stephen Root, Gary Cole

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. We all had a good laugh when I started the day job that still drags on 40 hours per week and every cubicle had a brand new red Swingline stapler.

I’m not sure if everyone got the joke at hand…

Did I Like It: As with any cult comedy—and Mike Judge is certainly hit the target twice on that with this and Idiocracy (2006)—it’s the lines people tend to remember. You took my stapler. O face. That’d be great. TPS reports. Even silent moments live in the collective consciousness, like the scene where our heroes exact their righteous vengeance on the fax machine* that had so thoroughly stymied their days.

What we don’t really talk about is how insanely relatable not only the drudgeries of life at Initech are—regardless of whatever field you may have conned into pretending to give you a living wage. Whatever problems I—and, from what I understand, Judge himself—has with the too-tidy ending, there is something profound in the film’s meditation on how not only most people don’t like their jobs, but a job is fundamentally unreliable as a source of any kind of real happiness.

I kind of wish I had internalized that lesson before the proverbial they handed me my own red stapler way back when. Might have made the last fifteen or so years a little easier to swallow. At least I think I’ve worked out what does work about life for what may end up being the next fifteen.

*Because killing Lumbergh (Cole) would have been a lot harder to slink out of in the third act with only a positive attitude and a deus ex machina to guide them.

Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe (2022)

Director: John Rice, Albert Calleros

Cast: Mike Judge, Gary Cole, Nat Faxon, Chi McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: The animation may be upgraded—and haltingly at that—past the point where it has any remaining charm from its 90s roots, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t laughing pretty consistently from beginning to end. In a year surprisingly full of multiverse-themed films, it proves to be my second-favorite example, right behind Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) but oddly more satisfying than the perfunctory Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

The movie is completely self-aware about its position in the universe, quite literally. Pitching itself as the dumbest science fiction movie ever made (it might feel a rivalry with Mike Judge’s other opus, Idiocracy (2006)) and luxuriates in that role. The plot is almost not worth mentioning, but due to the almost instinctual stupidtiy of NASA (the organization and their employees prove dumber than the protagonists) Beavis and Butthead (both voiced by Judge) are flung from the late 90s where we last left them, and into a COVID-less, but no less fraught 2022.

Do B and B have any place in our current era? If we take them on face value—as more than a few parents, including my own—did back in the day, almost certainly not. They are so unrepentantly venal that they make the cast of Seinfeld look like the Missionaries of Charity. And where comedies of the bleak-hearted surely lean on farce, but at his best Judge harnesses societal satire and seamlessly fuses it with the farce. B and B may be grotesquely stupid, but they were forged that way by the time which they came from, and as I type these words I realize that 2022 has been waiting for them to come home this whole time. Could they continue on like this? They’ve gotten this far, who am I to say?

Batman: Death in the Family (2020)

Director: Brandon Vietti

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Vincent Martella, John Dimaggio, Gary Cole

Have I Seen it Before: No, but I’ve read the comic series. I’ve also felt underwhelmed by many of these DC animated adaptations, so I’m left with a number of questions as I start the movie. The obvious question is will the end of Robin be as violent as it was back in the 80s? Is that even something I want to see? But the other questions I have are far more pressing. Will HBOMax keep the interactive feature advertised (the main thing drawing my attention in the first place)? Will the story continue past the (somewhat Schrödinger-esque) death of Jason Todd and include Iran appointing Joker as their ambassador to the UN? Honestly, that’s the wilder story to tell, giving that character diplomatic immunity.

Did I Like It: Ooh, boy, no. The answer to all of the questions are a resounding no. Not only is the supposed interactive element of the film removed, we are subjected to a short that is apparently just one of the possible endings of the film, and that ending culminates largely in a flashback to the events of Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010). I’ll admit that it might have been too much to hope for the Joker-at-the-UN storyline. I’d even be willing to accept if it the film presented the various endings to me, minus the interactivity. This, however, is not what I wanted when I clicked. The rest of the feature run time is padded out with additional shorts featuring Sgt. Rock (Karl Urban), Adam Strange (Charlie Weber), and possibly others. I’m not sure. I turned off the film somewhere in the middle of the Strange story.

Normally, I wouldn’t even finish a review if I couldn’t finish the film, but I did watch the above titled film, so I’m going through with expressing my disappointment. Actually, disappointment barely begins to cover it. The film on its own merits is a letdown, and the packaging of the film is a disappointment bordering on false advertising. 

When was the last time I saw a Batman movie that didn’t underwhelm? The Dark Knight Returns animated movie? Maybe. It’s probably been since 2008, realistically. Here’s the deal DC: Call me when Keaton is back on duty, not before.