Office Christmas Party

If the recent Bad Santa 2 can be accused of being too mean spirited and not having enough laughs to go with it, then Office Christmas Party can be accused of not having enough laughs, as well as not being mean spirited enough.  A movie like this needs to strike that perfect balance of cynicism and genuine laughs, and this one never reaches it.  It's gutless and tame..

Despite having six credited writers, I have a hunch that this movie was largely improvised, which is never a good thing.  You can throw as many talented people into your movie as you want, but without a stable script to back them up, you're kind of just throwing money to the wind.  The people in this movie can be and have been funny.  They include Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller, Olivia Munn, Kate McKinnon and the usually reliable Jillian Bell.  But they're working without a net here, and they seem to know it.  Instead of embracing the anarchy of the concept, they seemed strangely shackled.  It looks like many of them were having doubts about the film while shooting it.  They aren't even allowed to have a lot of fun during the titular Christmas Party scenes.  Instead, they're tied up in a weary plot about trying to save a tech company and rescuing a kidnapped friend, while the extras and supporting actors get to party and have fun.  They often look like they wish they could just abandon the plot, and join everyone else.  So did I.

The plot, such as it is, concerns the struggling Chicago branch of a tech company called Zenotech.  It's headed by the goofy and mostly kindhearted Clay Vanstone (T.J. Miller), who inherited the branch from his father, and has now resorted to having to use his own personal money in order to keep the office running and his workers employed.  His sister, Carol (Jennifer Aniston), is the CEO of the overall company, and basically has hated her brother's guts since they were kids.  She's always resented the fact that their father made Clay the head of the Chicago branch, and thinks she now has an excuse to shut him down, since his branch of the Zenotech corporation isn't turning a profit.  Clay and his best employee, Josh (Jason Bateman), insist on getting one more chance.  They propose that they can convince a powerful client named Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance) to partner with them, thereby saving the company.

The best way to convince Walter Davis to make a contract with Zenotech, Clay figures, is to invite him to the Office Christmas Party.  Carol has forbidden the party, but Clay, Josh, and lead computer tech Tracey (Olivia Munn) go ahead with it anyway, and actually throw all their effort into an end-all bash that will impress him.  As is expected, the party quickly gets out of hand, leading to flowing alcohol, the employees in various stages of undress, and someone accidentally putting a pack of cocaine in the fake snow machine that's shooting "snow" all over the office.  Rather than focus on what could happen under these circumstances, the writers instead throw more plot at us.  Carol has offered Josh a job at the New York Zenotech building, but hasn't told Clay about it.  Clay finds out, gets upset and drunk, and ends up getting kidnapped by a gun-toting pimp (Jillian Bell), who is managing a prostitute that one of the workers brought to the party to pose as his girlfriend, so that he can impress some guys at work, and there's a car chase down the streets of Chicago, and...

You see what I'm saying?  Office Christmas Party should just be a dumb, fun movie where the actors get to live out some outrageous scenarios.  Instead, the lead actors are forced to race through a story that barely registers, while the movie occasionally cuts to the supporting characters trashing the building.  You can tell that the lead actors are trying to liven this material up with their improvised one liners, but it all kind of runs out of gas long before the movie is over.  This is a movie that should have embraced the anarchic spirit that is obviously trying to get out.  You can see it throughout the movie, and there are a couple scenes where the energy level does pick up.  But then that pesky plot keeps on getting in the way, and drags everything back down to Earth.

This is a movie that promises a good time, and just can't deliver, despite the efforts of the cast.  They're trying, you can tell, but they just can't breathe life into this.  Some movies have too little plot.  This one has too much, and should have been a lot more fun than it is.

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