But Fox just couldn't manage that again with Judge's movie, set at the fictional, downsizing software firm, Initech. After getting a quick heave-ho from theaters in its initial appearance, Office Space still managed to gain a following on video and cable. Yet Fox seemed awfully slow to realize this. The movie's original no-frills widescreen DVD went out of print in 2003, replaced by a no-frills fullscreen disc. Fox evidently didn't notice that Office Space had spawned a cottage industry of unofficial products—from Initech coffee mugs and sticky notes to T-shirts highlighting the movie's many memorable moments—and Swingline even introduced a red stapler because of the demand created by this movie, after its art department had a Swingline painted red and "cast" it as the most prized possession of office drone Milton, the star of the Judge animated shorts that preceded it.
Fox has finally heeded the popularity of Office Space and released the new Office Space: Special Edition with Flair! DVD. Of course, the movie remains as funny as ever. I'm sure a company somewhere has strung up a banner in its office that arrogantly implores its employees to ask "Is this good for the company?" before every task, as Initech does here. And I'm sure there are middle-managers in industrial parks who believe organizing a "Hawaiian Shirt Day" is being the best pal in the world to their underlings, as persistently annoying Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) does. But Judge makes such efforts in corporate relations totally laughable. His cartoon hero, played onscreen by Stephen Root, returns as a sort of Greek chorus and avenging angel rolled into one, having his desk repeatedly moved, getting squeezed out of a piece of cake during an office birthday party, losing that red stapler to a grabby boss and figuring heavily in the climax. But Judge puts more Everyman-style cubicle warriors at the center of his story, including software grunts Samir (Ajay Naidu), Michael Bolton (David Herman) and especially Peter (Ron Livingston), whose sudden and liberating clarity following a hypnosis session puts him at odds with his job as a cog in the corporate machine. With Peter deciding to strike back against his dehumanizing bosses as he pursues a relationship with a chain-restaurant waitress (Jennifer Aniston) and helps his two buddies fend off downsizing, Office Space is as sharp as ever.
But what of the extras in this long-awaited special edition? Pretty disappointing. Most glaring is the absence of Judge's four Milton animated shorts. Instead, the major extras here are eight deleted scenes (which run about six minutes in total) and the new half-hour Office Space: Out of the Office featurette. Although for some reason the deleted scenes are offered only in "Video Assist" footage and not on film, what's here for extras is decent, but flimsy. Many of the extra scenes overlap with ideas in the finished film, so it's easy to see why they were expendable. The most interesting cut tidbits are two small things excised from the last few minutes of the movie that would have turned its resolution a little darker. They wouldn't have necessarily improved things, but it's interesting to see that Judge gave himself this darker option.
The featurette gathers most of the principals from the movie (with Aniston seen only in archival on-set interviews). Judge always has interesting and amusing things to say, and right at the start he reveals that something that sold him on doing the movie was Cole coming in to read for the role of annoying boss Lumbergh and nailing the passive-aggressive voice Judge had given the character in the animated shorts. Similarly, Livingston, Naidu and Herman each speaks to his character's struggle for self-respect. Livingston sums it up best when he says "Fight Club would be the movie that Peter Gibbons, in his head, thinks he's in." But the featurette is choppily-structured, divided into sections that sometimes run minutes, sometimes only seconds. It's as if the documentary wants to bust beyond the half-hour mark, and another 10 minutes might have beefed up those lean sections.
The Office Space: Special Edition with Flair! DVD has been priced as a budget disc, which I suppose is some acknowledgement that it is not as generous as most deluxe discs. If you're looking for more than what it offers, you might want to check out its limited edition Gift Set, which runs about $10 more and also includes a red stapler and other souvenirs of the movie, but which is available only from one particular big box retailer.
For more information about Office Space: Special Edition, visit Fox Home Entertainment.
by Paul Sherman
