This film has the feel of a short film that was stretched out to feature length by the addition of an idiot subplot involving embezzlement. Despite this, it is a dead-on satire of office politics and life in a cubicle. While the characters are all types, they are types you might recognize in your office. I spent much of the movie saying, "I know that guy!" If the jokes stretch a little thin after a while, the movie is still more than worth watching.

Peter (Ron Livingston) hates his job at Initech so badly that he has anxiety problems. His girlfried is cheating on him, but he doesn't have the heart to do anything about either of his problems. His friends Michael Bolton (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu) have their own problems: Bolton is constantly asked if he is related to "that wonderful pop singer" (his response to this is among the funniest lines in the movie), and Samir can't find anyone who can pronounce his name. Also at the office is Milton (Stephen Root), who steals every scene he's in—he's that quiet, muttery guy who everybody takes advantage of, and his mumbled entreaties to get his office supplies back and threats to burn the building down are definitely the best part of the movie. There's his boss Lumbaugh (Gary Cole), who speaks in a drone and starts every sentence with, "Mmmyeah, Peter..." His routine with the reports that Peter forgot to file will provoke laughter from anyone who has had to deal with middle management.

After a hypnosis session goes awry (the hypnotist dies), Peter decides that he just won't try anymore. It's not that he decides to get fired, he just decides not to try anymore. He doesn't go in to work, he saunters nonchalantly past his protesting boss, and he tells the "efficiency experts" who are brought in to fire people that he doesn't care enough to work. They mistake his straight talk for management potential, and decide to promote him while downsizing his friends Michael and Samir. (Why he doesn't just use his new clout to save their jobs is not worth asking, because logic doesn't necessarily factor in to this movie.) They come up with a harebrained scheme to embezzle money from the company, which predictably goes awry. Meanwhile, his change from sad sack to alpha male prompts Peter to ask out the beautiful waitress (Jennifer Aniston) at the Bennigans-like restaurant where he eats lunch.

The movie works best when it sticks to the office. The scenes involving the pitiful Milton are the best, followed by Michael Bolton's agony over his name, then Peter's mullet-headed working-class neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Bader), who also steals his scenes, then one scene where a coworker attempts to convince the firing squad not to fire him. ("I've got people skills, God damn you! Why can't you understand that?") The whole embezzlement scheme reeks of an attempt to make the soup last longer by adding more water to the broth. There's a slight tendency in the film to hold up honest, manual labor as the preferable alternative to office work, but I would suspect that a real-life Lawrence probably has his own batch of complaints about his work environment...