Oh no - yet another Parker Posey indie movie. As a fan of Posey’s, it is a daunting prospect every time she appears in a new movie, because there’s always the possibility that she’s going to fail this time round. Happily enough, as the credit listing proves, Posey is part of an ensemble cast in this, her latest outing, which means she doesn’t dominate the film.

Boasting a cast of indie queens and television personalities, "Clockwatchers" is an appealing comedy about four temp workers in an organization, waiting out their time as they try to become somebody in what they consider their post-office hours, "real" lives. There’s the new girl Iris (Toni Collette) who’s shy, gauche and awkward (basically Muriel from "Muriel’s Wedding" without the wedding fixation). The daughter of a master salesman, Iris is given to bouts of tongue-tied embarrassment and has issues about her sense of self-esteem. Putting on hold her designated career as a sales person extraordinare (her father’s convinced it’s in the genes), she opts to join the temp pool at GCA, a large faceless tax corporation of some sort. Although isolated and lonely at first, she gradually finds friends in the form of the other temps on her floor. There’s Margaret (Posey), the longest serving temp on the floor, the wiseass with the razor sharp tongue who knows everything and everyone, who dreams of becoming a "permanent" one day. There’s also Jane (Alana Ubach), the one with the rich boyfriend who’s waiting to marry and leave behind her dreary existence. And there’s Paula (Kudrow), the actress wannabe whose flighty exterior hides a brittle, broken personality. At first, everything’s fine between the quartet, but soon, cracks begin to surface, and when things start missing in the office, fingers start pointing and doubts and betrayals begin to plague one and all.

First time director Jill Sprecher, who wrote the script together with her sister Karen Sprecher, obviously knows her material well. Although the entire film hangs on a very slight wisp of a concept, it is thoroughly entertaining in spite of how little there is going on. The Sprechers temped extensively and it shows in their confident understanding of the frustrations and idiosyncratic dilemmas faced by the four protagonists. The film occasionally suffers from having too passive a point of view (it is told through Iris), and pedestrian incidents tend to be magnified and milked for full dramatic potential, but in return, the audience is treated to some zippy dialogue and a handful of interesting performances.

First of all, the entire cast should be given trophies for enduring a film whose soundtrack consists almost entirely of muzak - be warned. Thankfully, the incessant droning of the monotonous tunes does not seem to have affected many of the performers. The men in the cast, including JAG’s David James Elliot (sorry ladies, he stays fully clothed in the film) and Jamie Kennedy from the "Scream" movies, do good work, but are merely along for the ride. The female cast is what shines, although, inevitably, there is a weak link. In this case, Alana Ubach is the chief under-performer. Her role, to begin with, is the slightest and least interesting. It is not helped by Ubach’s lazy act - she seems content to pull faces and to mope on cue. Consequently, whatever dramatic tension her character might have generated (her fiance could be cheating on her, she’s the chief culprit in using office phones for unofficial calls) is entirely lost. The audience simply cannot muster enough to care for her, and her presence seems trivial and unnecessary. Posey plays Margaret almost exactly as she played Jackie O. in the criminally under-appreciated "The House of Yes" , minus the psychosis. This has as much to do with the way the character is written (loud, brash and slightly off-kilter) as with the way Posey assays her wickedly funny lines. Wisely given lesser screen time, Posey never has the chance to make Margaret irritating nor overly familiar, and she nails her lines perfectly. Toni Collette’s work here also recalls her star-making turn as Muriel; given that she did such a good job there, it goes without saying that she does an equally good job here. However, one wishes both Posey and Collette had switched roles with each other - it would have been interesting to see how that would have turned out. As it is, the only surprise in the cast is Kudrow. At first glance, Paula sounds like a variation of Phoebe/Ursula, and the first scenes in the film require Kudrow to do no more than rehash her sitcom personality. Later on in the film, however, she’s given a chance to tap into the dark places of a ditz’s psyche, and this she does powerfully in a few very brief moments of great subtle, almost sublime, acting. At once sad, forlorn and superficial, Kudrow makes Paula the one who most needs rescuing from temp hell, and the one character the audience best identifies with.

There are worse ways to spend a few hours than to catch the travails of this bunch of temp workers. The script sometimes over-reaches itself, trying to metaphorically examine ponderous life issues such as "the transience of friendships" and "the constant race of life" - these moments, mostly done via voice-over narration, seem jarring and out of place. All that muzak doesn’t help either. The best things on offer in "Clockwatchers" are the spot-on observations of the lives of those at the lower end of the corporate ladder, and some good performances. Charming, if forgettable.

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