The most recent film on this list, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET embodies the complete and total excess of the finance and stock market industries. More than any film on this list, Martin Scorsese’s movie is what the American Dream can be before it falls apart. Everything that makes office movies is great and taken to the nth degree. We all want to work with Jordan Belfort and none of us would admit it.
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Most of you probably expected this to be #1 and there is a case that could be made for it to be. OFFICE SPACE is the movie every office set film is compared to and served as inspiration for THE OFFICE series. Full of quotable lines and great characters, this is one of the funniest movies of all time.
The majority of this film takes place in an office and features some of the most memorable dialogue in film history. No one ever said sales was an easy job but David Mamet’s play and James Foley’s film makes it look like a nightmare. Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, and the late Jack Lemmon are all coworkers you would never wish on your worst enemy but are still amazing to watch.
A movie riding on the success of Michael J. Fox’s appearance in BACK TO THE FUTURE, this comedy is very dated but still a fun 1980s comedy about working at a big corporation. It stretches logic how Fox’s character can fool everyone, but it does so with a smile and a wink.
Terry Gilliam’s dystopian comedy is equal parts 1984 and METROPOLIS. A brilliant work of cinema, this is a movie that takes the Monty Python sense of humor and twists it more than ever before. Jonathan Pryce is great as the everyman lead character who goes down the rabbit hole of bureaucracy and fever dreams.
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Few movies satirize the 1980s as brilliantly as AMERICAN PSYCHO. Part black comedy and part horror movie, the film also evokes everything over the top about offices in that decade. Take the classic business card scene as a prime example. Clearly a dick-measuring contest brought down to fonts and variations of the color white.
Fans of THE OFFICE and VEEP will be well aware of the cinema verite style of IN THE LOOP. This great British political comedy gives us the workings of multiple government offices in ways we have never seen before. James Gandolfini gives a great performance here, but the film is stolen by the brilliant Peter Capaldi as the foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker.
Mostly remembered for the massively teased hair and New York accents of Melanie Griffith and Joan Cusack, WORKING GIRL embodies the crazy culture of 1980s offices. Harrison Ford is the typical executive and Sigourney Weaver is the power-hungry businesswoman while all the little people look on in wonder.
Newspapers always appear as high intensity workplaces, especially in the gripping political thriller ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are great as the reporters about to crack the story of the century and we get to see all of the inner workings as to how it came about.
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A horrifying dystopian portrait of a future where machines replace humans and workers are nothing more than cogs in a giant factory. METROPOLIS works almost a century later despite being a silent film and that is a testament to it’s originality and unique visual design. I would never want to work there but it is a cool place to watch.