It’s time for another classic comedy movie and this is one that has definitely aged pretty well. It’s fun seeing the battle between worker and technology although the machine is definitely set up to fail quite a bit here. It’s a fun movie with a lot of fast paced dialogue and likable characters. At the end of the day it may have less depth than some other titles but works out well enough for me.

The movie starts by introducing us to a mysterious guy named Richard. He’s walking from department to department of a big company and nobody really knows what he is doing here. He spends the most time over by the reference section where he has everybody nervous. The head of the department is Bunny and her team has always done an all star job here. Why should big business have anything to say about it? Well, they are throwing in a machine to replace the humans and get things even more efficient. Can she prove that humans are more than a match for any machine?

It’s the classic dilemma of man vs machine. It’s always a classic debate but at the end of the day you can’t really stall progress. In the short run things will get real disrupted of course but in the long term it just ends up working out. That’s really how these things always go. That being said, you can fight it for a little while and Bunny does bring up a good point that this section is one of the last where you would be able to use a robot. Here’s how the job goes: Someone calls in asking for the answer to a fun fact, then the worker goes and finds the answer.

It’s a very labor intensive section but one that is difficult to automate because the circumstances are different every time. Using a machine for payroll? Sure that makes sense but for something like this in the short term it will only create more work. Particularly since in this movie the characters know all of the answers almost off hand and the few that they don’t are easy to find. For the robot you have to type in the question, then wait for it to print out the response. Additionally you have to make sure that all of the details are right and then input the corrections.

There is no way to stop an answer once it has started and the machine is super fragile. You could say that it was really set up for failure. Now there is a twist about the robot near the end but I would say that the twist doesn’t even make much sense. It may have some slight utility in helping out but the negatives outweigh the positives. For starters it takes up a vast amount of space and it’s quite loud. It would definitely mess up the office atmosphere without a doubt.

As the main character, Bunny does a good job of proving why humans are still needed at this point in time. She does an incredible job of remembering details and locating the answers to things in a cinch. She has so much experience and genius that she could probably have risen to CEO status if she felt the urge to do so. It’s why her coworkers get annoyed when she is being used by Mike the whole time. He doesn’t seem to appreciate her intellect except for when it benefits h8im like in writing papers. He sort of takes her for granted and is always canceling their dates.

You can certainly cut some slack when there is a job that has you on call but the problem is how these occurrences are so regular. Additionally, to be dating for I think they said 8 years and not proposing is crazy. I know some do the whole endless dating routine but to me 1 year is pretty much good enough. By then you should have made up your mind. Ignoring any special circumstances or exceptions, you shouldn’t be dating for longer than that without making things solid.

So Mike’s not very likable but Bunny is a little at fault here for being to patient. I would also say this is what prevents the main romance from being any good because even up to the final scene she seems prepared to go back with Mike and it takes Richard speaking up to prevent her from this. Good on Richard for making his move but I would have liked to have seen more initiative out of Bunny.

Meanwhile Richard doesn’t always look that great here. I know he had orders about not telling anyone why he is here and about the computer but at the same time when you are hanging out with a group for so long, you can’t just suddenly show up with a new computer and expect them to be okay with this. He took way too long to try and explain himself. Some things he could not anticipate like the glitch where everyone thought they got fired but explaining himself more would have helped.

I will say though that the workers didn’t make themselves look great in getting so drunk at the party. If you’re going to do that, you should probably at least have some signs up about how work is paused for the day. I’m guessing there was probably no voicemail back then so there’s nothing you can do about the ringing phones but at least it’s clear this way that everyone is occupied. It seems like otherwise this was a very unofficial kind of thing. I am glad that they all get to have fun though, most Christmas parties don’t tend to get quite so wild at the office.

While Richard didn’t handle some things well, he was a very entertaining character though. I liked that he was actually fairly aggressive with Mike when the guy showed up on the stormy night. Richard may be forgetful but at least he’s more direct than some of the characters and he adds a lot to the humor. A comedy has to be funny after all and he always ensures that it is. I also liked Bunny’s supporting cast. They were all good at their jobs and had developed personalities. While they may not get to do too much in the story, they all felt like real characters as opposed to just being there to fill out the cast.

Overall, Desk Set is a pretty fun film. It all may be dramatized a tad but hey that’s what you’d expect out of a comedy. The romance tends to be on the weaker side and the characters may not always be responsible but you should still have a pretty fun time all the way through. The film’s pacing is pretty good as well so it never dwells on any scene for too long. It may feel like the kind of film that you will quickly forget after watching it but that’s okay. It’s the kind of movie that you have a good time with even if there isn’t much to discuss afterwards.

Overall 7/10