McDonald’s famously referred to its top-tier customers as “heavy users”: the (often single, male) patrons who eat fast food many dozens of times a month, sometimes every meal of the day. For these folks, a Big Mac is no occasional indulgence — it’s a regular food drip, a comfort, a way of life. I bet those dudes eat so many burgers and fries and shakes and whatever that they could debate the relative merits of competing chains’ menus with a granularity and precision and eye for detail that would baffle me, you, or your average walk-in.
As you might properly infer from this burbling little brook of bon mots called The Parsing Haus, I see a lot of films. (How many? Well, for me, the most touching moment in the terrific biopic Life Itself came when Ebert’s wife took the ailing critic out to see a movie — his favorite place, his second home. I loved that scene, and I totally get it, too.)
So when it comes to movies, I’m a heavy user.
You may not be, and this poses a little problem for films like Office Christmas Party. Because if trips to the cinema are a scarce resource for you — whether a treat meted out on special occasions or a tough little hardtack ration put off for the occasional empty night — then I can’t and I won’t suggest you watch this. There’s too much other, better stuff to see, too much decent entertainment swirling in the multiplex to piss your special time allowance down a dank gutter of opportunity cost. To you, I say: Enjoy the trailer for this, then go see something else.
Okay. Having discharged my solemn duty to steer my couple-films-a-year, what’s-good-right-now flock clear of a blunder they weren’t likely to make to begin with, I can say: For a heavy user, this film does scratch the itch. Sure, you might feel a bit like a bum hitting the Listerine, or Cinemark’s answer to Benjamin Graham sucking the last drag from a celluloid cigar butt, but it gets the job done. It’s a night at the pictures, and that’s a good night to me.
What this film is not is (a) very much like the trailer suggests, or (b) consistently funny. Instead of the balls-out jet-fueled abandon promised in the trailer, what we’re actually given is an overwritten and confusing story (the office isn’t doing well and the party’s being thrown to attract a client?) and a talented cast of very funny actors who sputter and spark on their own but never fire up into a decent, full-piped ensemble rumble. There are a few legitimately hilarious moments, but it always comes down hard and flat right after.
You’re probably wondering how on Earth I’ve made it four hundred words into this without shouting KATE MCKINNON!!!!, and you’re correct to do so. It was so hard! Kate McKinnon is in this movie! A lot, actually. She doesn’t get the best lines, and she’s typecast as an uptight buzzkill uncool HR-lady, but she’s a highlight nonetheless and as usual. I love me some Kate McKinnon.
There’s a deep bench of talent, too, but nothing very good comes of it. Jason Bateman is decent, TJ Miller is fine, Olivia Munn is very watchable — though none of their characters has any depth. Jennifer Aniston seems out of place, washed up — an old pro who had it once and lost it but keeps at it, hoping it’ll come back. (Her role had cameo written all over it, but she, like McKinnon, has a surprising amount of screen time.) Rob Corddry even manages to be not especially entertaining in this, which is novel.
The story zigs and zags between successive oh-so-extreme plot points, as though a big huddle of writers tossed out every zany idea to keep ADHD-tweenies’ eyes off their phones and then crammed every last one into the script when in actuality all this really needed was a simple basic story with some heart and characters worth caring about.
Which is why I wish this movie were Hot Tub Time Machine, or Can’t Hardly Wait, or 21 Jump Street, or Take Me Home Tonight, or even This Is The End. If you haven’t seen those, see them first. If you have, Office Christmas Party has a handful of solid additions to the party-joke canon, but — sadly — not much more.
Haus Verdict: The ads promise nonstop high-octane raunchy party madness, but the real thing sags under a busy story and a cast that never really hits its stride. Genre veterans will pluck what’s tasty and toss the rest — everyone else, pass.
Office Christmas Party opens tomorrow, December 9.
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