Tareau Barron

Movie Review #8: Office Christmas Party

Sooooooooooo. I bought something from the concession stand😲😲! Yep payed full price for a medium soda which was $5. Glad I don’t drink soda too often. But I’m not telling the whole truth. I had a coupon for a free candy bar and free Small popcorn with the purchase of a medium soda. Haha. My cheap ass. Anyways, Office Christmas Party is pretty self explanatory. Jason Bateman stars as Josh Parker, a manager at a tech company called Zenotek. Josh is recently divorced and trying to keep his employees from tearing each other apart during the holidays. With runors of layoffs and bonuses not getting handed out leading up to the holidays, tensions are real high in the office. His boss who is the CO-CEO of the company Clay Vanstone  (T.J. Miller) inherited the company from his ever loving father, but Clay is a party animal who doesn’t know the first thing about business and heavily relies on Josh to do everything. Clay’s sister (who has the brains and the business acumen to run the company) Carol Vanstone  (Jennifer Anniston) is the other CO-CEO. Carol is mean, vindictive, and jealous due to the fact that their father bonded with Clay more and left Clay in charge of Zenotek’s 200 employees.

Long story short, Zenotek’s profits are down in their last quarter and Carol gives her brother an ultimatum: Either they somehow close an important client  Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance) in 2 days thus raising the quarterly profits from 7% to 12% or they have to lay off 40% of their staff with no bonuses for the remaining employees.

In Zenotek there is a wide array of personalities that make up the company. You have the sexy hacker named Tracey Hughes (Olivia Munn) who has a crush on her boss, you have the self righteous, over achieving HR lady Mary (Kate McKinnon), You also have the struggling single mother, who is looking for a good man all while being a motherly figure to the office in Allison (Vanessa Bayer), you have the quiet Asian nerdy guy who has a mom fetish in Fred (Randall Park), you also have the perverted employee who is down for anything in Jeremy (Rob Corddry). With these cast of characters, drugs, prostitutes, Booze, and adult humor, you would think that this brilliantly scripted movie would deliver gut busting hijinks. Unfortunately alot of the jokes were Ill timed and rushed. What I mean is a joke would happen, and right before you could laugh, another side joke would happen and then you, as the viewer would get confused. Some of the jokes were clichéd and recycled. And is it me or comedy movies today just try and do the most extreme antics to pass it off as humor? I didn’t really laugh too much in this movie but it had great potential to be an epic comedy. The plan was great but the execution was so so. The results? Office Christmas Party had a $45 million dollar budget and so far it’s made $83 million.

I give this movie a C+. 

30 comments

  2. Yet another movie you saved me from seeing. Thanks for the honest review. I will only see a film if it receives an honor roll grade from you. If I don’t see at least a B … I’ll either sit it out or cop the bootleg lol. The preview looks very promising – but there is nothing worse than a comedy that isn’t downright hilarious.

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  3. And I am kind of upset that my man Courtney Vance is in this. He is one of my favorite actors : his role in The Preacher’s Wife with Whitney and Denzel, bro .. epic. And his role on Law and Order solidified him. Kind of upsetting to see him in mediocre projects – feels like he is damaging his brand a bit, you know?

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