Office Christmas Party (2016) Paramount/Comedy RT: 105 minutes Rated R (crude sexual content and language throughout, drug use, graphic nudity) Director: Will Speck and Josh Gordon Screenplay: Justin Malen, Laura Solon and Dan Mazer Music: Theodore Shapiro Cinematography: Jeff Cutter Release date: December 9, 2016 (US) Cast: Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer, Courtney B. Vance, Rob Corddry, Karan Soni, Jillian Bell, Abbey Lee Kershaw, Randall Park, Jamie Chung, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Fortune Feimster, Sam Richardson, Oliver Cooper, Adrian Martinez, Andrew Leeds, Matt Walsh, Ben Falcone. Box Office: $54.8M (US)/$114.5M (World)
Rating: *
Earlier this week, I published my top five worst Christmas movies on the Movie Guy 24/7 FaceBook page. I’d like to amend that list. I’m bumping Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny and replacing it with Office Christmas Party, a comedy destined NOT to become a cherished holiday favorite. Rather, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a lump of coal, the gift of choice for all the bad children of the world. Trust when I say everybody responsible for bringing this miserable excuse for a comedy to life belongs on Santa’s naughty list.
Office Christmas Party is crude, vulgar, gross and crass. I realize these very same adjectives can be applied to either of the Bad Santa flicks, but Office Christmas Party is also very mean-spirited. There’s nothing funny (or jolly) about saying F.U. to a child as Jennifer Aniston’s character does in one particularly distasteful scene set in an airport terminal.
Aniston (Horrible Bosses 1 & 2) plays the movie’s Grinch character. That would be Carol, the cheerless CEO of Zenotek, an Internet company founded by her late father. Her slacker brother Clay (Miller, Deadpool) runs the Chicago office which hasn’t been performing up to her impossibly high standards as of late. For Carol, it’s all about the bottom line. As such, she orders him to cut Christmas bonuses and fire 40% of the staff. Worst of all, she demands the annual holiday party be cancelled. Their only shot at avoiding closure is convincing a potential client (Vance, The People vs. OJ Simpson) to sign on with them. Clay, along with right-hand man Josh (Bateman, Horrible Bosses 1 & 2) and tech goddess Tracey (Munn, Ride Along 2), decides that the best way of sealing the deal is to show the guy a good time. This means the party’s back on!
To say that things get a little out of control is an understatement. It goes way beyond that. Remember the toga party in Animal House? Or the high school party in 2012’s Project X? The bash in Office Christmas Party makes either one look tame by comparison. What starts off as a wild (and unauthorized) after-hours work party quickly descends into complete debauchery. What do you expect when you have an ice sculpture that squirts eggnog from a certain appendage (yes, that!) and water coolers filled with tequila, vodka and gin?
In the midst of the madness, there are a couple of subplots. Tracey is working on an app that will completely revolutionize the Internet. The company’s uptight HR rep (SNL’s McKinnon) fights a losing battle trying to keep things politically correct. A meek employee (Soni, the cab driver in Deadpool) hires an escort (Kershaw, The Neon Demon) to pose as the hot girlfriend he’s always bragging about. This leads to a situation involving her gun-toting pimp (Bell, The Night Before). The main focus, however, is on the titular party and all the gross goings-on. It’s like Bachelor Party without the laughs. A coke-snorting donkey is much funnier than a reindeer drinking from the toilet.
The premise of a wild, out of control party, in and of itself, isn’t bad. It can work. I’ve cited three good examples in this review. The problem with Office Christmas Party lies in the execution. It’s directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon, the guys responsible for the execrable The Switch (also with Bateman and Aniston). Like the 2010 misfire, Office Christmas Party turns the stomach more than it tickles the funny bone. Six writers worked on this thing thus proving what they say about too many cooks.
It’s a complete waste of a large and largely talented cast. None of the major characters are even remotely likable. Aniston’s character is particularly hateful. I don’t condone violence towards women, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing her get punched out at some point. She’s a total bitch. There’s not a single laugh to be had which is too bad since two minor characters- an aggressive security guard (Randolph) and a testy first-night Uber driver (Feimster, The Mindy Project)- had potential. They get off the only decent lines in the movie. I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t groan either.
Wild comedies aren’t known for realism. Office Christmas Party goes beyond that. For example, how is it that the police don’t show up when partygoers start throwing vending machines out the window of a high-rise office building? Where are they during a wild car chase at the end? You’d think stuff like that might attract their attention. These people don’t just leave a mess; they trash the office. Isn’t that grounds for termination? That they still appear to have jobs at the impossibly happy end is a true Christmas miracle.
I don’t mind comedies that are in bad taste. I don’t mind gross, crude or vulgar either. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Office Christmas Party gets it completely wrong. Bad Santa 1 & 2 did inappropriate R-rated Christmas comedy better than this rancid pile of crap. Watching it is like drinking eggnog gone sour. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It makes that Ice Cream Bunny all the more desirable. Cross this one off your list.
