CONTROL ALT DELETE

As they say, you can love your computer, but don't LOVE your computer!

Tyler Labine (whom I recently saw in the fantastic horror spoof Tucker & Dale vs Evil, which was why I picked up this film) stars as Lewis a lead programmer at a company-for-hire whose main job is to swoop in and protect major corporations from the end of the world. In computer speak, that would be the dawn of the new millennium, when the year flipped from 1999 to 2000. People trembled at the worst-case scenarios of this computer glitch: it would cause computer systems around the world to explode, planes drop from the sky, and the financial systems to go haywire, among other things (or so they thought). Remember how much hand-wringing this caused? Sure we can laugh about it now, but even I had a six-week temp job that was focused around researching Y2K and the U.S. government. But anyway...

As 1999 ticks to an end and Lewis' responsibility at work grows with one last big monster project, his personal life falls apart. His girlfriend dumps him because he prefers online porn over real sex, his apartment descends into squalor, and catfighting among departments at work reach a peak. Oh, but there's that cute but kind of weird new receptionist (Sonja Bennett), and there's that new-model computer at home that Lewis has become obsessed with. This may be a bit of a spoiler (but it is the central conundrum of the film), but the film asks: can and should someone become truly, um, intimate with their computer? And is this OK?

Control Alt Delete is a curious little indie in the Office Space vein, and I actually thought it was pretty funny. Yes, there's the quirky boss ("My computer has been raped!"), the best buddy in the other cubicle, the office nemesis, the quirky co-worker with the undefinable ailment, and of course the cute nerdy-but-kinky girl at the front desk. But I laughed. From other reviews I've read, the sex-with-your-computer angle was too much. Simply too much! But call me sick and twisted, it made me laugh.

One of the odd things about the film is when it was made. I kept flipping over the DVD box to check if it came out in, say, 2000. No! 2008! Really? I can only wonder if this film lay in development hell for 8 years, or if someone really did find it a good idea to revisit a point in technology history that is only a decade old, but already feels wayyyyy after the fact. It is an odd little time capsule of a film, with an after-the-fact office setting, but with a kink that could, well, be timeless.