CLOCKWATCHERS (44)

Directed by: Jill Sprecher

Starring: Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow

The Pitch: Four (young, female) office temps are unhappy in the stifling atmosphere of a big corporation.

Theo Sez: An honourable failure, in that it does actually achieve what it seems to be trying for - namely, to evoke the awfulness of office temping, the oppressive boredom of the kind of job where "the only real challenge is trying to look busy when there's nothing to do" and the soul-destroying self-absorption of a corporate environment, with its office politics and petty rivalries ("You're sitting in my seat," says one manager to another at a staff meeting). Problem is, it evokes it all too well, turning what begins as satire - a kind of indie 9 TO 5, pitting our bubbly heroines against a collection of small-minded tyrants - into something much heavier, a kind of Kafkaesque nightmare ; except that "Kafkaesque nightmare" makes it sound far more interesting than it is. The (deliberately) slow pace, (deliberately) flat lighting, (deliberately) annoying Muzak droning in the background, (deliberately) arid compositions with lots of empty space around the characters are all very admirable, but the only appropriate response seems to be to slash one's wrists (or stop watching). Posey's irrepressible energy has the poignancy, in this context, of a gazelle trapped in quicksand - but at least she tries to escape ; the rather lumpy Collette, on the other hand, fits right in.