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| Courtesy of Paramount |
I’m happy I was wrong. Instead, I got an enjoyable, raunchy flick with a surprisingly big heart. Granted, there’s not much plot to contend with, but sometimes it’s fun to throw a bunch of funny people together in a room and watch what happens. The results aren’t always a home run, but far more jokes land than you might expect.
The story is simple enough: a goodhearted tech company manager (T.J. Miller) learns that the CEO (Jennifer Anison), who also happens to be his big sister, plans to shut down his branch at year’s end. In order to save his employees’ jobs, he teams up with his best friend/right-hand man (Jason Bateman) to throw a killer, last-minute Christmas party in an effort to impress a client (Courtney B. Vance) and land an account worth millions.
That’s it. Nothing overly complicated or surprising, just a straightforward plot with just enough at stake that viewers invest in the characters as actual people instead of joke delivery systems. Credit to the screenwriting team of Justin Malen, Laura Solon and Dan Mazer (working from a story by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore and Timothy Dowling) for focusing on personality and emotion first, which allows the movie’s big laughs to come from a natural place.
Co-directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck do an admirable job of corralling their large cast of comedic powerhouses, almost all of whom get a spotlight moment or two. The obvious standouts are Miller, Bateman (doing yet another variation on his go-to harried everyman persona) and 2016 comedy MVP Kate McKinnon as the office’s repressed HR rep.
However, Aniston, Vanessa Bayer (McKinnon’s SNL co-star) and Karan Soni bring their A-game as well. Most surprising of all is Vance (fresh off his Emmy win for playing Johnnie Cochran in FX’s incredible The People v O.J. Simpson), who proves to be a terrific straight man and earns two of the movie’s biggest laughs (even if the trailer ruins one of them).
The main drawback to Office Christmas Party – aside from the fact that it’s 10 or 15 minutes too long – is Olivia Munn, who plays Bateman’s co-worker and love interest, despite having zero chemistry with him. It’s jarring to watch the movie grind to a halt every time the focus shifts from the other, far more interesting characters to her dull, unrealistic WiFi subplot.
Still, the fact that I’ve only got a couple of quibbles with the film comes as a big surprise considering my previous lack of excitement. We haven’t had a solid holiday comedy in a while, so Office Christmas Party comes along at just the right time. It’s too soon to tell if this one will become a yearly tradition, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Office Christmas Party is rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, drug use and graphic nudity.
Grade: B+
The main drawback to Office Christmas Party – aside from the fact that it’s 10 or 15 minutes too long – is Olivia Munn, who plays Bateman’s co-worker and love interest, despite having zero chemistry with him. It’s jarring to watch the movie grind to a halt every time the focus shifts from the other, far more interesting characters to her dull, unrealistic WiFi subplot.
Still, the fact that I’ve only got a couple of quibbles with the film comes as a big surprise considering my previous lack of excitement. We haven’t had a solid holiday comedy in a while, so Office Christmas Party comes along at just the right time. It’s too soon to tell if this one will become a yearly tradition, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Office Christmas Party is rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, drug use and graphic nudity.
Grade: B+
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