Employee of the Month

In his review of the Olsen Twins' film, New York Minute, film critic Roger Ebert theorized that teenage girls like the Olsens because they can picture themselves being them. What he meant is that the Olsens don't exactly show anything in terms of talent that your average girl off the street couldn't also do. The same perhaps could be said of Jessica Simpson, a woman who has shown very little talent in terms of both singing (her main claim to fame), and now acting, where she made her universally panned debut in last summer's Dukes of Hazzard film. (Unless you count the numerous commercials she appeared in shilling junk food with Muppets, and even then, her acting talents were upstaged by Miss Piggy and Animal.) Her performance in the new comedy, Employee of the Month, can best be compared to a deer caught in the headlights. Sometimes it seems as if she doesn't even know she's supposed to be in a movie and acting. That's okay, though, no one else in this movie really tries either. Amateurish in just about every way, the best thing that can be said about Employee of the Month is that as bad as it is, it still could have been much worse.

30+ year old slacker, Zack Bradley (Dane Cook), has had no dreams or ambitions since he lost it all 10 years ago trying to make a fortune on the Internet. He's held the same dead end job for years, working as a box boy for a local discount warehouse store, and has no aspirations to improve his life anytime soon. That all changes when the lovely Amy (Jessica Simpson) joins the store's team as a cashier. When an employee friend tells him that Amy has a history of dating guys who won the Employee of the Month Award at her past jobs, Zack for the first time feels true passion for his work, and decides to impress the girl with his new attitude. Unfortunately, this puts him directly at odds with his personal rival, Vince Downey (Dax Shepard), a smarmy and egotistical cashier who has won the Award at Zack's store the past 17 times in a row, and also has his eyes on Amy. When Zack becomes so wrapped up in showing up his rival and winning Amy's heart, he doesn't even realize when he starts to lose his own identity and his friends in his single-minded quest.

From the flat and lifeless direction by actor-turned-director, Greg Coolidge, to the screenplay that can barely muster laughter above a chuckle, Employee of the Month is about as stale as a comedy can get. Never mind the fact that we have another pointlessly long comedy that for some reason somebody felt that it needed to be nearly two hours long. (Is there no such thing as editing anymore in Hollywood? What's next, a three hour remake of Police Academy?) The film is so scattershot and slapped together that I'm willing to believe just about any script could be sold. Let's take a look at that premise, shall we? So, this Amy girl only dates guys who win Employee of the Month. In the real world, people would see her for the shallow and attention-grubbing little witch that she is. In the world of this movie, she's a kind, caring soul who is able to see the real beauty behind the slacker Zack, and reject the advances of the much more well off and evil Vince. But wait, if she likes Zack for who he is as this movie would want us to believe, then why he is trying so hard to win the Employee of the Month title? Did the writers not ask themselves this obvious question during the weekend they obviously spent hammering out the screenplay? Doesn't that make the whole competition and rivalry between Zack and Vince completely pointless, other than the fact there would be no movie whatsoever if they didn't? When it comes to Idiot Plots, this one takes the cake.

But wait, there's more! If Amy's a cashier, why does the movie never depict her doing anything that resembles work? Every scene she's in, she's on break or it appears to be her day off. She never deals with a single customer, nor does she ever run an item through a scanner. Actually, Zack and Vince seem to be the only guys in the entire store who do any work. The rest of the cast are a crew of one-note comic characters that include a legally blind eye glasses specialist played by comedian Andy Dick, an angry midget who runs the company and likes to beat up on his brother the store manager, a mentally challenged black security guard, and Zack's best friend played by comedian Harland Williams who doesn't even seem to have an identifiable job, despite the fact he's wearing the store uniform, and just stands around commenting on the action around him. The only character who manages to get anything close to a chuckle is Vince's little Yes Man underling played by Efren Ramirez from Napoleon Dynamite. Despite the fact that many of the actors who appear in this film have done some strong comic work in the past, either in stand up or in film, the movie has no idea what to do with them, so they just go through the motions, giving as minimal of an effort as possible.

The lead cast don't come off much better, and that's thanks mainly to the fact that Dane Cook is just plain unlikeable in the lead role. With his scruffy beard and narrow eyes, he looks more like a thug than a likeable romantic lead that we're supposed to be rooting for. Dax Shepard gets a couple moments of potential as the villain, but the material the script gives him doesn't allow him to truly go as far with the character as he should. He always seems close to be doing something funny, but then the script holds him back, and just squanders his potential. And then there is Jessica Simpson, who proves that her performance in Dukes of Hazzard was not a fluke, and that she really does not deserve to have an acting career. Her idea of acting is to stare vacantly into the camera, hoping the others on screen will act for her, look confused when someone is talking to her, or flash her smile. Her character is barely developed, with the fact that she has big ears being the only thing we learn about Amy besides the fact that she likes to date the Employee of the Month. There's even a moment in the film where someone calls out her name, and it takes her a couple seconds for her to even realize she's being spoken to. Someone either needs to hire this girl an acting coach, or just realize she has no observable talent for performing in her current state. Her "romantic" scenes with Dane Cook have all the spark and passion of a loveless relationship on the brink of a messy divorce. Maybe the director failed to tell her she's supposed to like this guy.

While Employee of the Month is not the worst comedy I've seen this year, that does not excuse the fact that a budget and good talent was wasted on something so insignificant and mediocre. The movie obviously aspired to be a parody of mind-numbing labor in the tradition of Office Space and Clerks. Instead, it comes across as completely forgettable fluff that doesn't even have the decency to be even remotely interesting. This Employee of the Month certainly won't win any awards, unless the annual Razzies decide to "honor" Miss Simpson's performance.

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