BEFORE: Well, I burned this film to DVD last fall, and I had it next to "The Daytrippers" in the queue, because they both had Parker Posey in them - but you how this goes, sometimes I put two films together and then they get separated. I needed "The Daytrippers" right after Thanksgiving because it had Hope Davis in it, but then I had to stay on the Hope Davis track and get to "The Special Relationship" with Michael Sheen. So there was no room for another Parker Posey film, and this wouldn't have connected to the rest of the chain anyway, unless I also included "Jesus Henry Christ" with Toni Collette and Michael Sheen, but since there wasn't room for ONE more film, let alone two, I had to trim things down. But then when a film gets cut, I try to get back to it as soon as possible, so here it is, just 13 films later, tying up that loose end.
Joe Chrest carries over again from "The Dirt". You may know him as Mike's dad from "Stranger Things", but he's a chameleon-like character actor who's been around for a long time, and actors like him who are very versatile and pop up in a lot of different movies are very helpful to me, connecting the films that otherwise seem to have nothing in common. Last year he popped up in ""Welcome to the Rileys", Where the Crawdads Sing", "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" and "Assassination Nation", but I've also seen him in "Ant-Man", Free State of Jones", "The Blind Side" and "Erin Brockovich", among others. "The Front Runner", "Deepwater Horizon", "Gifted", and now he's already made the year-end wrap-up again, and we're only about a week in.
THE PLOT: The relationship between four female temps all working for the same credit company is threatened with the arrival a new hire, who lands a permanent position one of the women was vying for.
AFTER: I'm not sure how I got from one of the most interesting foursomes in the world - Motley Crue - to one of the most boring, these four temps working at a credit company in California. I mean, they go to happy hour at the bar after work, but that's about it, one has a thing for the copier repairman so she's always breaking the machine to get his attention, but that's a bit of a lame storyline. It's not really their fault, it just feels like the writers didn't give them anything to DO.
This film is praised for being an early "indie" film, but I just couldn't get excited about it. It started out with some promise, with Iris, an insecure woman getting a temp job, and then she falls in with a crowd of three other temps led by very assertive "pack leader" Margaret, also there's an aspiring actress named Paula but then I think we learn later that she's not really an actress, and then there's Jane, who's engaged to a jerk but hey, at least he buys her stuff. Then there's a whole scene where Iris' father comes to visit her and he wants her to follow up with a job at another company where he's got a contact, but that whole part doesn't really go anywhere either. Lots of loose threads and disconnected paths in this screenplay...
There's another woman who gets hired at the company, but in a permanent position, and then all the temps are jealous - well, at least something finally HAPPENED instead of all these people just pretending to type and trying to look busy until 5:00 pm. But then there's this whole storyline about somebody in the office stealing things from other people's desks, and I thought, great, maybe this film finally has a direction. Nope. The thefts are so weird, and then figuring out who's stealing stuff is also quite weird, and then I wasn't really sure in the end who the thief was and WHY they were stealing things, and you kind of need to have a WHY, or else it's just pointless.
Margaret suggests a one-day strike due to the temps being overworked and underappreciated, but her three friends bail on her (again, for some reason, but do we even know?) so she's the only one who didn't show up for work with no notice, so that's a fireable offense. Hmm, some friends these women turned out to be, they turn on each other in a heartbeat. And I'm supposed to like them? Later (after figuring out the identity of the thief), Iris voluntarily decides to leave, and she points out that all jobs are temporary jobs. Well, she's right, I've been at my job for 30 years but I'm just starting to realize that it can't possibly last forever, it's going to end, one way or another, someday, and then I'll have to figure out something else to do.
This came out in 1997, but you just couldn't make this film today - four white women working as temps, and all the executives are white men? No way, a story meeting at the production company would suggest that one of the women should be African-American, one should be Asian-American, and one should be a lesbian. And the CEO of the company should be another woman, and definitely Latina, because this way the film can celebrate diversity and also gain more ground with a larger audience. Don't believe me? Just watch "Like a Boss", which also had Lisa Kudrow in it, only Salma Hayek played the company CEO.
I just don't think it went far enough, that's all - a few years later, Mike Judge came out with "Office Space" and really tried to push the envelope, even using some of the same ideas (like weird guy who collects office supplies) and that was a lot more successful - maybe because the unsatisfied office workers tried to DO something about their situation, and not just complain about it.
Also starring Toni Collette (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Parker Posey (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Alanna Ubach (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Helen Fitzgerald, Stanley DeSantis (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Jamie Kennedy (last seen in "Scream 3"), David James Elliott (last seen in "Trumbo"), Debra Jo Rupp (last heard in "Teacher's Pet"), Kevin Cooney (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Bob Balaban (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Paul Dooley (last seen in "Other People"), Scott Mosenson (last seen in "The Kid"), Irene Olga Lopez (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Joshua Malina (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), O-Lan Jones (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Michelle Arthur (last seen in "Saving Mr. Banks"), Athena Ubach, Chuck Borden, Sully Diaz, Jim Wise (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Wendy Pitts, Jaime P. Gomez (last seen in "Clear and Present Danger"), Terri Hoyos (last seen in "Dog"), Brodie Nelson, Shauna Wilson, Lynn Tufeld (last seen in "Disclosure").
RATING: 3 out of 10 punched timecards
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