Film Review – Office Christmas Party (2016)

With the holiday season brings us a new holiday comedy entitled Office Christmas Party that’s sure to bring the raunchiness to the festive season.  The following Office Christmas Party review will be spoiler free.  Comment with your own thoughts at the bottom of the page to get the conversation going!

Background

Office Christmas Party stars Jason Bateman, T.J. Miller, Olivia Munn, and Kate McKinnon among other notable actors.  The movie follows Clay Vanstone (Miller) as he tries to save the branch of his company from being closed by his sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston).  In order to keep everyone employed and happy, Clay attempts to through a massive Christmas party in the office in order to lure Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance) into accepting a multi-million dollar offer so that no one from the company has to be laid off.  Obviously, as the party ensues, things go awry and it’s up to a select few of the company to save the day.

image via ComingSoon.net

I did not go into this movie with much expectations.  A movie called “Office Christmas Party” is not going to win any Oscars any time soon, so I went into this movie just hoping for raunchy, ridiculous fun.  I was really excited about the cast of this movie.  Other than the main characters, there was a ton of really funny people in this movie such as Rob Corddry, Vanessa Bayer, and Jillian Bell just to name a few.  With such talent involved, you expect the movie to be very, very funny.

Since it’s a holiday movie , you always hope that a new Christmas movie will join the ranks of the classics.  Not that I expected much out of this movie, but you inherently want a movie surrounding Christmas to be incredibly enjoyable so that you can come to the holiday season every year and have another great movie to watch other than A Christmas Story and enjoy the most wonderful time of the year.

image via Collider

What I Liked

Office Christmas Party, however, is exactly what you expect it to be when you watch it.  There is no new ground paved throughout the run time of this movie, but there is some laughs to be had.  T.J. Miller, as always bring his A-game and brings a ton of laughs as the lovable loser of the branch of his company.  Miller is responsible for my favorite line of movie which occurs towards the end of the film.  Like in Deadpool earlier this year, he brings the great, over the top, and even somewhat offensive jokes that we needed from one of the main characters in an R-rated comedy.  He received a lot of good laughs throughout the film from the audience.

I also really loved Kate McKinnon as the head of the human resources department of the company that slowly lets go of her inhibitions as we progress throughout the movie.  McKinnon, at first, attempts to not offend anyone by her non-denominational Christmas sweater among other things and then suddenly flips a switch towards the end of the movie.  She almost every scene  with her quick, unexpected quips that you can’t help but laugh at from their absurdity.  She’s great at playing the straight girl to the ridiculousness that is happening around her.

image via IndieWire

What I Didn’t Like

However, this movie clearly has issues which this Office Christmas Party review will get into.

The main characters of the movie are arguably Jason Bateman and Olivia Munn who, unfortunately, are not given much to do throughout the film.  Their performances are by no means bad, but some of their jokes fall flat and they’re not given much to do otherwise.  They’re mostly “meh” throughout the movie.  A classic Christmas movie needs some better leads than  what we got in Office Christmas Party.

Other than the office party itself (which is very fun), the movie often gets derailed in unfunny, annoying action.  A lot of the subplots try really hard to be over-the-top funny but never get there.  These plot moments mostly revolve around Jillian Bell who plays a pimp.  She mostly gets on your nerves and is very off-putting.  There’s some very contrived and dumb bits that are supposed to get laughs but fall very, very flat and are even somewhat irritating.

image via Rotten Tomatoes

While you shouldn’t expect the story of a comedy such as Office Christmas Party to be Oscar-award winning, it should not be completely predictable.  As this movie plays out, you can easily guess what is going to happen from start to finish.  The movie becomes a bore because of its predictability.

What I Liked…Continued

I will, however, sing the praises of Courtney B. Vance in this movie.  Like Kate McKinnon, he has quite a turn from being very reserved to outlandishly absurd.  He got some big laughs from the audience throughout the movie.  I was definitely surprised with some of the outrageous moments we got from him.  They are definitely some of the highlights of the film.

image via ComingSoon.net

Conclusion

For the most part, Office Christmas Party is an enjoyable, albeit a completely generic and unmemorable movie.  For these reasons, Office Christmas Party gets a C.  You’ll most certainly get some laughs from this film, just don’t expect anything special.

Thanks for reading my Office Christmas Party review!  What are your thoughts?  Have you seen Office Christmas Party?  What are your thoughts?

As always, what do you want me to review next?  Whether it’s old or new, the choice is up to you!  Thanks for reading!