Synopsis
An adaptation of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" told in the setting of a modern office.
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Cast
- Crispin GloverBartleby
- David PaymerThe Boss
- Glenne HeadlyVivian
- Joe PiscopoRocky
- Maury ChaykinErnest
- Seymour CasselFrank Waxman
- Dick MartinThe Mayor
- Carrie SnodgressBook Publisher
- Greta Danielle NewgrenBoss's Date
- Ken MurakamiLandlord
Recommendations
- 90
The New York Times
Mr. Parker has brilliantly updated his source and grasped its essence, composing a sorrowful and hilarious tone poem about alienated labor, or an absurdist workplace sitcom, as if a team of French surrealists had been put in charge of "The Drew Carey Show." - 80
Slate
The neat thing about Jonathan Parker's modern-day Bartleby (Outsider Pictures) is that it brings out all the vaudeville undercurrents in Melville's dark tale and turns it into a surreal tragi-sitcom for our own era. - 63
Miami Herald
Though this film can be clumsy, its ambitions are equally -- and admirably -- uncommercial. - 60
Variety
Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk. - 50
Philadelphia Inquirer
It's a parable as timely today as when it was written. But except for Paymer as the boss who ultimately expresses empathy for Bartleby's pain, the performances are so stylized as to be drained of human emotion. - 40
Film Threat
Oh, boy. This is not unlike watching one of the movies Jerry Lewis made after that concentration camp/clown epic nearly destroyed his career and his mind. - 40
Los Angeles Times
It's not a bad idea, and it has the right cast and the right look. But, sad to say, it lacks the pace and energy to make it come alive and therefore remains more of a literary conceit than a movie. - 40
Austin Chronicle
Comes across as stiff and uneven.
