Corner Office (2022)
August 13, 2023 5:48 AM - Subscribe
As Orson, The Authority's newest employee, finds himself trapped in the absurdities of corporate life, his alienation deepens when he discovers a room he's told doesn't exist.
I like Jon Hamm and I don't like office bureaucracy / late-stage capitalism, so I thought this would be a good fit for me.
It was... relentlessly fine? Essentially a good 30-minute short padded out to feature length, with Jon Hamm an Ignatius J. Reilly-style narrator, dismissive and contemptuous of his fellow employees, doing undefined work toward unstated goals, struggling with the fact that his colleagues can't see his obvious superiority.
Discovering The Room (which is, incidentally, not a corner office) gives him new poise, confidence, and eventually the ability to turn out work outside his normal duties that impresses even the unseen EVP of the company.
[SPOILERS]
But the fact that The Room is not real is telegraphed clearly, and then made abundantly clear fairly early on, takes all the wind out of the thing. That, and the fact that Hamm's character is just such an ass. We're not rooting for the pompous moustached jerk that narrates the movie, there's no tension in whether or not the room exists, and so we're just watching an unlikeable boob with an undiagnosed mental health issue caroming off people who clearly dislike him for a very long time.
It's economically assembled. I always like seeing Danny Pudi, and Christopher Heyerdahl is incredibly effective as the floor manager who can pivot from menacing to pathetic to sympathetic on a dime. In the hands of a director who was more inclined to take risks, or a screenwriter (adapting from a novel, which I haven't read, so can't comment on its fidelity) who was better at either comedy or getting weird, I think it could have been something.
I'd recommend re-watching Office Space or Sorry to Bother You for work parody, Adapatation for unreliable narrator shenanigans, or some of Mad Men if you just like seeing Hamm in groovy wood-panel offices with Danish Modern chairs.
I like Jon Hamm and I don't like office bureaucracy / late-stage capitalism, so I thought this would be a good fit for me.
It was... relentlessly fine? Essentially a good 30-minute short padded out to feature length, with Jon Hamm an Ignatius J. Reilly-style narrator, dismissive and contemptuous of his fellow employees, doing undefined work toward unstated goals, struggling with the fact that his colleagues can't see his obvious superiority.
Discovering The Room (which is, incidentally, not a corner office) gives him new poise, confidence, and eventually the ability to turn out work outside his normal duties that impresses even the unseen EVP of the company.
[SPOILERS]
But the fact that The Room is not real is telegraphed clearly, and then made abundantly clear fairly early on, takes all the wind out of the thing. That, and the fact that Hamm's character is just such an ass. We're not rooting for the pompous moustached jerk that narrates the movie, there's no tension in whether or not the room exists, and so we're just watching an unlikeable boob with an undiagnosed mental health issue caroming off people who clearly dislike him for a very long time.
It's economically assembled. I always like seeing Danny Pudi, and Christopher Heyerdahl is incredibly effective as the floor manager who can pivot from menacing to pathetic to sympathetic on a dime. In the hands of a director who was more inclined to take risks, or a screenwriter (adapting from a novel, which I haven't read, so can't comment on its fidelity) who was better at either comedy or getting weird, I think it could have been something.
I'd recommend re-watching Office Space or Sorry to Bother You for work parody, Adapatation for unreliable narrator shenanigans, or some of Mad Men if you just like seeing Hamm in groovy wood-panel offices with Danish Modern chairs.
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The most interesting angle from which to watch this might be to think of it as a movie about Workplace Accommodations -- instead of one we've seen before that's literally about reality-bending mental illness -- and from that angle it was the right call not to save the room's status for a Twilight Zone-style twist ending.
Jon Hamm's character really is a savant, and as long as the rest of the office can deal with letting him do one odd little thing for a few hours each day, he could continually produce the finest work the corporation has ever seen. (Plus maybe he could use some training on how to be less of a jerk about it.)
posted by nobody at 8:41 PM on September 11, 2023