Critic Reviews
64
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
12(63%)
mixed
5(26%)
negative
2(11%)
Showing 19 Critic Reviews
88
Clockwatchers is a wicked, subversive comedy about the hell on earth occupied by temporary office workers.
80
This impressive first feature by Jill Sprecher, coscripting with her sister Karen, shows that she has an eye and ear all her own.
78
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.
75
Clockwatchers offers a perspective of the American corporate office that is both viciously satirical and depressingly accurate.
75
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.
75
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.
75
Clockwatchers has a terrific, submerged feel, in keeping with its themes of corporate lassitude, isolation and paranoia. [24 Jul 1998]
75
Clockwatchers may not be perfect, but it's on to something. [22 May 1998, p.D5]
75
Quite consciously, Sprecher has dramatized that wry riff from Frank Zappa: "Life is high school with money." [12 Jun 1988, p.C3]
75
More on-the-money than Nine to Five and a refreshing change from the Armani-clad piranhas of Wall Street, Clockwatchers contrives the rare feat of being both funny and depressing. [12 Jun 1998, p.14]
