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United Kingdom, United States · 1997
Rated PG-13 · 1h 36m
Director Jill Sprecher
Starring Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach
Genre Comedy, Drama
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Iris can best be described as a wallflower. She begins her first day as a temp for the nondescript Global Credit Association by waiting in a chair for two hours. This sets the scene for her misadventures with the other temps, Margaret, Paula, and Jane. However, the tension between the girls escalates when a new hire enters the picture.
The film's message, that it's impossible to trust in an environment that does not reward loyalty, is as dark as the message sent by the far more acidic In The Company Of Men. Though Clockwatchers doesn't feature the flashy language of that brutal film, it still reveals a similarly astute assessment of modern inter-office politics and workplace alienation.
Clockwatchers has a terrific, submerged feel, in keeping with its themes of corporate lassitude, isolation and paranoia. [24 Jul 1998]
San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Shulgasser
The boredom of the temporary office workers of the title was nothing compared to the boredom I experienced as this movie dribbled on before my eyes.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Clockwatchers offers a perspective of the American corporate office that is both viciously satirical and depressingly accurate.
Clockwatchers may not be perfect, but it's on to something. [22 May 1998, p.D5]
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
This impressive first feature by Jill Sprecher, coscripting with her sister Karen, shows that she has an eye and ear all her own.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
On the surface, it's a mystery in which someone is going around stealing personal items, and the women are suspected -- and suspect each other. In a larger sense it's about how corporate culture is not only antithetical to individuality and human kindness but also hostile toward these things.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
There’s a wisp of a plot (who could the office klepto be?), but most of Clockwatchers is as empty of drive and imagination as its poor-little-victim heroines, who never seem more than sulky, overgrown high school girls.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Clockwatchers is a wicked, subversive comedy about the hell on earth occupied by temporary office workers.
Austin Chronicle by Russell Smith
Clockwatchers may not be a Grapes of Wrath for the Nineties, but its intelligence, slow-boil outrage over grunt workers' dehumanization, and subtle assertion of their power to resist make it a terrific piece of pro-labor propaganda.
And I love it!