Office Christmas Party Review

R: For Crude Sexual Content and Language Throughout, Drug Use, and Graphic Nudity

Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Bluegrass Films, Entertainment 360

1 Hr and 45 Minutes

Cast:  Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T. J. Miller, Jillian Bell, Courtney B. Vance, Kate McKinnon, Jennifer Aniston, Vanessa Bayer, Rob Corddry, Randall Park, Karan Soni, Matt Walsh, Adrian Martinez, Jamie Chung, Sam Richardson

REVIEW: Christmas is here and it’s time for Christmas movies for the family and the adults. 2015 offered us Seth Rogen’s The Night Before, and this year we have….Bad Santa 2. But honestly who cares about Bad Santa 2? Who liked Bad Santa 2? Nobody wanted to see that. People were waiting for Office Christmas Party. When you have nothing but a wide array of comedic actors from various of shows ranging from Arrested Development, Silicon Valley, Friends, Saturday Night Live, Children’s Hospital, the list goes on. Think of it as a huge comedian crossover episode of all those shows. What a Christmas miracle! Or is it?

When Zenotek CEO Carol Vanstone (Jennifer Aniston) tries to close the branch of her hard-partying brother Clay (T. J. Miller), he and his Chief Technical Officer must rally their co-workers and host an epic office Christmas party in an effort to impress a potential client and close a sale that will save their jobs.

THE GOOD:  Office Christmas Party is exactly what the title is. It’s an Office Christmas Party. Comedians. Party. Shenanigans. What more do you want? Though it does bring a simple idea of throwing this party that takes place in one day, the film gradually gets crazier the longer it goes on. The film starts off pretty tame introducing these characters with their own personality, but once the party begins, the film slaps on it's R rating. It doesn’t try to force a lot of dirty raunchy humor down your throat as it takes you by the hand and guides you there. Though some jokes are written for themselves as you’re able to fill in the blanks on how a joke will play out later in the film, you’re interested in how it will affect the characters at this party. The film goes from a fun episode of The Office that somehow gradually ends up becoming Wolf of Wall Street.

As T.J Miller plays Clay who is the heart of the film and embraces the happiness of others while being irresponsible, Jennifer Aniston who plays his sister Carol is so despicably mean and that she’ll even make The Grinch go, “GODDAMN WOMAN!” Think of Clay as a Christmasy Cat in the Hat and Carol as The Grinch if he was a woman. When they’re together, their dynamic as siblings work even down to the point of physically fighting each other in a childlike manner. Their sibling dispute with her T.J Miller makes the film incredibly funnier. The majority of the heart of the film is the relationship between the two.

When you have a film like this with a large comedic cast, you wonder if anybody outshines another. Well, the answer is no. Everyone in the cast has their shining moment and is thoroughly fun to see. You even see the most serious of actors such as Courtney B. Vance joining in the madness. It is a side of Vance you’ve never seen before where he gets really messed up doing things you would never imagine him doing in film. Olivia Munn thankfully has a lot of funny things to do that makes up for her brief screen time in X-Men Apocalypse. 

THE BAD: As the film goes on, you see so many familiar faces going oh I know that person he’s or she’s funny, yet the film itself is funny in parts. It does have a story that is a beginning, middle, and end, but yet you feel there is more they can do with these characters despite how crazy the film gets by the end. For it being an R-rated comedy it sometimes results to the bottom of the barrel juvenile humor where you see shots of penis or characters interacting with a sculpture shaped like a penis . Granted, it is rather clever in concept but initially, you still get the shocking genital visual gag that is really not funny. Instead of groaning or laughing, some of the visual jokes makes you go “huh.” than “HA!” With these characters honestly you can’t help but feel this is a TV pilot for a new Office show than a feature film. The film is cinematically filmed that you feel like you’re watching a movie, but yet it has such a television script.

THE RENDY: Last year on SNL there was an Office Christmas Party short with Pete Davidson and Jay Pharaoh rapping about an Office Christmas Party with quirky office characters including Amy Adams . It’s rather weird to me that somehow that became a full-length feature film from the directors of Blades of Glory that is unrelated to SNL. The film has both Vanessa Bayer and Kate McKinnon who are cast members on SNL, but yet there is no Lorne Michaels in the credits as a producer. So this release is just either very coincidental or extremely coincidental.

LAST STATEMENT:  As R-rated Christmas comedies go, Office Christmas Party is a merrily entertaining holiday feature featuring an all-star cast with a sporadically funny screenplay. 

Rating: 3/5 | 62%

Super Scene: "LET ME CLEAR MY THROAT!"