Review- Office Christmas Party

Office Christmas Party is one of those films that is less a film and more a collection of people who you like and people you recognise from that thing you think you quite liked. There is a story though and it's that a company must put on the Christmas party of a life time to bring in a potential partner who can keep the business afloat. As you may be able to guess, things spiral out of control and it all goes a little overly serious in an attempt for some action sequences that are meant to be good because they reference the Fast and Furious films. As I said, the story is only there to provide the funny people funny things to do. The thing is, you just have to make sure those things are actually funny.

You may have realised by now that for a film like this to work, what you need are performances that are hilarious. Unfortunately, what you actually get are funny actors and actresses who aren't giving good performances here. I'll just run through the cast and briefly mention if they're good or not (mainly not). Jason Bateman stars but was funnier in The Gift. Olivia Munn is somehow underutilised more in a film this year than she was in X-Men Apocalypse. T.J. Miller is a brief glimmer of humour in this film. Jennifer Aniston lacks the humour of Horrible Bosses and We're The Millers without whoring herself out. Kate McKinnon does her Hilary impression again but without that happiness Hilary always radiated. OJ's lawyer from the surprisingly good show about OJ earlier this year is less good here, unsurprisingly. That chick who's kind of like a female Jonah Hill is even more annoying than usual in this film. Kim Jong-Un has a mum fetish (the guy who played him in The Interview, to clarify. North Korea, please don't nuke my village). Doopinda from Deadpool is there and does his nerd shtick again, only without the laughs. Finally, one of the cannibals from The Neon Demon is there and considerably less naked here, although also far less interesting. The two are unconnected.

I was a little harsh on the acting and very harsh on the story but this is a comedy and I should be judging it on the jokes, so that's exactly what I'll do. The jokes are bad. Just objectively. The purpose of a joke is to evoke laughter, if I never laughed at a single joke in the film. That isn't to say I didn't laugh in the film, there were a few moments where I smiled at the absurdity of the scenario (like 3D printing a penis) and then sometimes the delivery. For example, TJ Miller's face just makes me laugh sometimes so therefore, I laughed about twice. Other than that, the film is kind of bland. It spends most of it's run time building up to when the party becomes properly insane, meaning the first half of the film is wasted time. There was a five minute stretch of the party in which it starts to feel pretty fun and then it goes to absurd and no longer entertaining lengths. I almost feel like the last bit of the film is meant to be more of an action film and less of a comedy although I found it as (un)funny as the rest of the film and the action was not interesting at all.

Office Christmas Party joins a long list of comedies that think that by assembling a group of funny people that everyone likes, comedy will just happen. The blooper reel over the credits hinted at some of that but sadly, this is an example of a lot of wasted talent. The only thing that won't be too wasted is your time, as it isn't very long, although to watch it I recommend being wasted. That's why Office Christmas Party gets a