Sunday, March 31, 2013
ON THE JOB
Today's movie was a re-run of Mike Judge's
more or less a cult movie for people who work in soul less companies. As well as people who are trying to find a way to "find themselves".
A comedy, it is pretty funny but Judge has been around the real world and has found a lot of humor which hits home.
The "consultants" are just like the "efficiency experts" who showed up at Ocean Spray when I was working there in 1965 or so. They got fired in front of the entire office because the head guy who was something of an asshole but not that big of one had no idea that having them would be so dispiriting. It went against his grain.
The boss, actually a passive aggressive pussy, is right out of my time with actual people I hired when I had my own company. I also had the pleasure of firing them for the assholes they were. We were suckers for the kind of guy who would kiss our ass and kick down.
So a lot of this is quite familiar.
I worked in the workplace, training managers and not one of them, well not many, wanted the kind of situation that they had to work in. But most felt powerless.
In this movie, a guy gets power by just relaxing and stopping with the bullshit. Stopping doing it, ignoring others who do it, being a happy person.
The other side of the comedy here, and there is a lot of it, a laugh every minute and more often a lot of the time, is out of a profound sadness that people need to suffer each other and themselves to observe "happy rituals" instead of being happy.
"Friday will be Hawaiian shirt day".
The added feature with Mike Judge and each actor in the piece is worth every minute of its watch except for the dunderheaded Jennifer Anniston who proves her character was just being herself.
It is a 5 out of Netflix5 because it is funny and sad in all the right places. And I will probably watch it again some day.
Labels: films
