Grade (C-)
“OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY” is directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck. It stars; Jason Bateman, T.J. Miller, Olivia Munn, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell.
This one revolves around a company CEO who tries to shut down her brothers branch. The always-partying brother will have to do something to stop the closure and with the help of his work partners he will throw a massive Christmas party in an attempt to secure a client whose potential contract could save the company, and everyone’s jobs.
What can you really say about this film? If you watched the trailers you will pretty much know exactly what to expect from this movie. It’s a cut-and-paste raunch-com with the usual college settings replaced with the workplace environment. The story-arcs and characters all follow the usual paths, and other than the jokes there is really nothing to invest in this movie. That you haven’t already done countless times during other similar works in the past.
The cast is fun however; Bateman, Miller, McKinnon, and Aniston all had their moments. They take their turns delivering some amusing moments. But not enough hilarious ones to make this movie very memorable at all. Mostly due to the fact that, while they all have their comedic moments, they also had many more that simply failed. In the case of Miller and McKinnon, there were too many forced situations and lines, that just do not land and it does get fatiguing.
Add that with a story formula that brings everything from the music montage, the love subplot, the suspected double cross, and on an on, and the result was stale. The down-time between laughs often stretched too far and few between. Thus, with a story-line itself that generates minimal interest on its own, the overall fun this movie could have created was hindered. Instead this one only delivers a few random comical moments here and there.
This movie also tried to have a couple serious scenes that when added with the extremely cliche situations, create no excitement at all and only pull you out of this movie even more. This one also should have been 85-mins tops, and weeded out some of the filler. This would have resulted in a much swifter pace that could have prevented this one from inevitably wearing out its welcome.
But there were some very comical moments that come from dialogue, physical humor, and laughable scenarios. There were a collection of fun side-characters that add some scenes of amusement. The cast make the best out of some generic dialogue but in the end, this was just another of the forgettable party raunch-com’s.