Checking out the retrospective for Office Space with Mike Judge is interesting since it allows you to see just how everything fit so well. How he got so lucky to lock down some of the best actors that could possibly be found is hard to imagine, but without a single actor in this film the film would have been something entirely different and it might not have come across in the same manner. They all had a part to play and they all nailed it so well that trying to put someone else in their roles would have been an insult to the fans that came to love this movie so much.
Much like other movies this one was cast in as great a manner as possible, though it seems that Judge had to at least have an idea of just who would exemplify the characters just right. For Milton, who, along with Lumbergh, was one of the original characters, it had to be a guy that could be mousy, quiet, and yet a rather big annoyance that people just didn’t want to deal with. Stephen Root is a very skilled individual in that he can play loud and obnoxious or he can be soft-spoken and equally obnoxious. His portrayal of Milton was perfect, as was Gary Cole’s of Lumbergh, the irritating boss that expects too much out of his people and gives just about nothing. The two of them are war constantly throughout the film without having to interact more than a few times.
Peter, the star of the show and the guy that drives it, is shown to be the kind of guy that just wants to drift through life until he finds something worth paying attention to. His job stinks, his relationship status is worse, and for Peter it’s more likely than not that every day is going to be worse than the last. And yet he’s the leader of the film, the one that everyone eventually looks to and defers to in order to keep things progressing. Michael is that tech-savvy nerd that thinks he’s so great but in reality he’s kind of the sum of his parts, no matter how much he tries to act otherwise. Samir is the vaguely unknown person that is a good friend but is also the guy that follows others around a lot for fear of having to make his own decisions. Michael and Samir both look to Peter for answers a lot of the time in order to know what to do, but tend to disagree with him when what he proposes seems too risky.
The last real notable member of the cast, aside from Jennifer Aniston, who’s just awesome in so few words, is Diedrich Bader as Lawrence. He’s kind of the ‘every-man’ that just breezes through life doing what he needs to in order to survive. He’s got a pretty good idea of what he wants and doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves to go get it. Lawrence is definitely not a follower but he still kind of defers to Peter at times.
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