Last night I watched Office Space. I remember having loved this movie when it was first hirable on video and I hired it. Now I own it on DVD. It was only £5.99.

And it's great. The running gag is that the heroes and heroin of the story are all being bossed by people who refuse to admit that bossing is what they do. "If you could do that, that would be really great" – instead of "Do that." Also, our hero, instead of having just the one boss, has eight of them (which is an easy mistake to make if you think that you don't have any bosses in your organisation at all) all of them asking our hero in the space of half an hour about the same trivial little mistake.

This is a highly stressful sort of regime to be subjected to. The superficialities of niceness are all being dumped on top of you, but in a deeply nasty and dishonest way, and your natural reflexes are thus screwed around with something chronic, the way they aren't by a boss who is honest about being that.

This movie is a throwback (in a more modest and Good First Movie way) to those fifties black and white Jack Lemmon movies, most notably The Apartment, in which a vast floor full of slaves slave away at desks, only now instead of desks it's cubicles. The moronically insincere language ( "Buddy boy!!") has changed, but is just as moronically insincere. Instead of pushing pens, the slaves push buttons on computers. But it's the same universe all over again.

The McGuffin, as I believe Alfred Hitchcock used to describe it, of this movie is the moment when a hypnotherapist (a) tells our hero to stop worrying about anything and just do whatever he feels like doing and to generally enjoy life, and then immediately (b) drops dead of a heart attack, which (c) leaves our hero in the (a) state permanently. That sets everything in motion, and creates a further string of great comic effects, as when he tells the complete truth about his job and how hard he does it and how he feels about it, to some visiting consultants.

Lumbergh, the Ghastly Boss, played by Gary Cole, is a truly wondrous creation.

Plus Jennifer Aniston is in it. She plays a character who is likewise neck deep in bullshit as the price of having her stupid waitress job. Her torment is that her boss wants her to wear lots of stupid badges, but won't just tell her to. Instead of simply obeying orders, she has to "express herself". Eventually, of course, that's what she does.

If you could watch Office Space, that would be really great.