In Clockwatchers, first-time director Jill Sprecher takes us into the world of temp workers, giving us a point of view we don’t often see. Sprecher, in collaboration with her sister Karen, wrote this intriguing little film in which nothing much happens — which is precisely the point. Things happen, just nothing much. While this might sound like a boring premise, it actually has the opposite effect.

The film starts off with Aussie actress Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, giving a convincing performance as an American here) in the lobby of a faceless corporation, waiting for her temp assignment. She later meets (independent movie queen) Parker Posey, who is, in essence, the leader of the temps. It is Parker who shows Colette the ropes.

Sprecher catches the magnitude of corporate hierarchy and the fact that the temps are relegated to a plane below the bottom of the bottom of this hierarchy. They work in an environment of strict (and often ludicrous) rules and regulations. It is in this microcosm of the corporate universe that our four temp heroines bond together, their segregation essentially accelerating the progress of their friendship.

Lisa Kudrow (television’s Friends ) is sublimely funny as a very aspiring actress. Newcomer Alanna Ubach is a rich girl who is counting the days to her impending marriage. Posey is the take-no-prisoners, icy-hot renegade who is, and forever will be if she doesn’t get promoted to be her boss’s assistant, a permanent temp; and Collette is the shy, quiet one who slowly opens up like a flower. These four learn to work the system and wreak havoc in their own small ways in an environment completely unsupportive of individuality. Watching them plod through day after day of mindless boredom, one cannot help but sympathize with their frustrations and rebellions. The main action occurs with a crisis over missing, presumed stolen, supplies. While this is a pebble in the big road of a rich corporation, it is a boulder in the lives of our intrepid temps who have to deal with being presumed guilty even if they are innocent.

The film doesn’t stretch over too long a period of time — these are temps, after all — but it manages to show all four women as independent beings, each with her own strengths and weaknesses. Though her film falters a bit towards the end, Sprecher has managed to take a normally inane setting and make it thoroughly interesting, funny, and sometimes sad. Not a bad job for a first timer.

Ruth, unwittingly, becomes a pawn in the extremist pro/anti-abortion struggle. She is befriended by a Christian family whose members are in the forefront of their community’s anti-abortion crusade. Mary Kay Place (The Big Chill) is the matriarch who takes Ruth under her wing. Not to be missed is Burt Reynolds’ performance as the leader of a far-right evangelical group, flying around in his private plane from crisis to crisis. It is priceless. Tippi Hedrin (The Birds, Marnie) makes an out-of-retirement cameo appearance as the head of the pro-choice movement.

All the while, Ruth couldn’t care less where she is or with whom, as long as there’s a place to crash, food to eat, and toxic fumes to sniff. She alternately coasts and blows through these people’s lives like a drugged hurricane, without a clue to the storm around her. Paying no attention to the change of politics and scenery, Ruth ambles over into the pro-choice camp, which is hell-bent on converting her to their cause.

It’s Ruth’s attitude (or lack thereof) and Laura Dern’s on-target performance that provide the comic force of Citizen Ruth. It’s obvious, even to Ruth, that neither side cares about her and/or her baby. She’s just a useful pawn in their political game. This is not a one-sided, preachy movie. Here we have both sides duking it out, bandying about their extrimisms, firing salvos of rhetoric at each other with wild abandon.

Directing with a perfect mix of comedy and seriousness, Alexander Payne manages to juggle a very touchy subject with absolutely hysterical humor to bring off a fine film. It’s rare to find such weighty controversial matters presented in American comedies, and rarer to find them presented with a complete knock at the extremist ends of both sides of this fence. No matter which side you happen to, personally, come down it, it’s hard not to like this film. It uses humor to puncture a hole in the overinflated balloon of political correctness while also exposing extremists for the cuckoos that they are.

What connects these two films, in addition to the humorous takes on depressing situations, are the fascinating well-drawn characters and the way they relate to the predicaments in which they find themselves. The best part is that we are neither like these hapless five nor are we likely to find ourselves, hopefully, in their situations. It’s enough just to watch them for an hour and a half. We probably wouldn’t want to know them personally. That’s the magic of movies. We not only get to see people who we wish we were, we also get to see people who, as interesting as they might be, we’re glad we’re not.