gypsybluejay If you are looking for humor...avoid! If you are looking for quirky depression....by all means, enjoy.I am always a fan of finding little known gems in the movie store, but this movie, unfortunately is not one of them. Despite having all of the makings of a delicious find (I believe the description on the jacket even said "side-splitting comedy!")I spent the next hour or so in a trance of 'I thought this was funny..." "Maybe it will get funnier once it is fully set up,' 'maybe it will get funny now,' 'maybe now!' It never got funny. In fact, the only character you can even hope to identify with is the boss, but very thinly. Oh sure, it had some hilarious moments, but they were very short lived and not enough to call this a comedy or sustain you through the rest of the slow and slipping plot towards utter collapse.I guess that is my main problem with it. The movie is quirky and (dare I say it) 'indy-ish' but NOT a comedy, despite the insistence of the tag-lines. For the most part it was vague and depressing, but it does manage to hold your attention, if only by sheer shock.

Eileen McHenry I found this movie disturbing. Advertised as a comedy, it is no such thing. There is a lot of comedy in there, all right, but overall the themes are heavy, disturbing, even horrific. Crispin Glover's performance is flawless, and his role in the story is to pose a lot of questions that never get answered. The story revolves around the other characters' failure to figure him out. The new employee at the Public Records Office in an unnamed city starts out doing a great job, but he does less and less work as time goes on until he is spending most of his time refusing requests to perform any job tasks, or simply gazing up into the air-conditioning vent. They fire him, but he doesn't leave. It gets worse from there, believe me.

rdoyle29 Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" gets a slightly surreal update in this offbeat comedy drama. The manager (David Paymer) of the city records department in a mid-sized California community decides that his staff of three - flirty chatterbox Vivian (Glenne Headly), sloppy Vietnam vet Ernie (Maury Chaykin), and slick-suited, Don Juan wannabe Rocky (Joe Piscopo) - could use some help, so he places an ad looking for a new employee. The boss ends up hiring the one and only applicant who wants the position, a quiet, pale young man named Bartleby (Crispin Glover). At first, Bartleby is a model of efficiency, but before long he loses enthusiasm for his job, much to the annoyance of his co-workers, and soon he's spending his days staring at an air conditioning vent. The Boss asks Bartleby to get back to work, but Bartleby's repeated reply to such requests is, "I prefer not to," and the Boss sees little recourse but to fire him. However, Bartleby refuses to leave his desk, and it soon becomes obvious that Bartleby has not only stopped doing his work - he's stopped going home and has moved into the office. Bartleby was the first feature film for producer/director Parker. He also wrote the screenplay, in collaboration with Catherine Di Napoli. There is really not enough material in Melville's story to warrant a feature length film. When "Bartleby" sticks to the text of the story it is interesting and fairly funny, but Parker is forced to add a lot of filler which is simply not very good. Worth a look, but in the end, a bit weak.

George Parker "Bartleby" is a pathetic indie comedy about a man, the title character (Glover), who is hired to work in a public records office and whenever asked to perform the only two functions in the office, verifying and filing, simply states "I'd prefer not to". A boss and three coworkers provide what meager comic relief is to be found in this flick in which Glover stands around catatonically taking up space while frustrating his boss. A feeble and amateurish attempt at film making, this bottom of the barrel flick is just another in a long line of junk indies; typically pictures on which some fledgling auteur cut his teeth before fading into the industry woodwork leaving his artifacts to circulate endlessly on tv. (D)