There’s another fantastic ensemble cast at play in my next film, director duo Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s raucous Office Christmas Party (2016). This one tells the side-splitting tale of how the titular Chicago office party gets dangerously out of control after Clay (T.J. Miller), the branch manager, pulls out all the stops to impress a client and save the branch and his employees’ livelihoods.
Like a well-stuffed stocking, the cast is stacked with gifted comedy actors, but I find myself wondering if it does enough with them. Miller is at his wise-cracking manchild best as the manager adored by his employees but who is ridiculously unqualified and only got the job after his company head father died. Daddy also made Clay’s bitch sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston) company CEO and she hits him with a decidedly un-festive ultimatum – boost profits ASAP or the branch is doomed.
Miller’s ‘people person’ boss is obviously not fit to run a company, is mostly concerned with being liked, but is smart enough to know the right people to delegate to. I am surrounded by folk just like this in my day job and I realise I’m watching this a whole year to the day that a mass exodus of people from my workplace due to Covid somehow saw me progress from nobody to the role of team manager within a week. It didn’t last long, but for a short while I found myself in the middle of loads of meetings where I encountered a few Clays and plenty of Carols – mega-bitches, only concerned with numbers and figures rather than actual human beings. This film weirdly reminds me how much I’m happy to stay out of that nasty corporate world, for my own sanity.
Wanting to avoid lay-offs, Clay and his top staffers Josh (Jason Bateman) and Tracey (Olivia Munn) hatch a plan to throw the most bitchin’ office booze-up ever to try and impress ageing, but still itching to party, big-shot client Walter (Courtney B. Vance) and maybe just close the deal to save the day and Christmas.
It's all an excuse for crazy festive debauchery, with Bateman playing to his strengths as the (semi-) sensible straight man to Miller’s immature but good-hearted dingus. Like all great parties, this is a movie about uptight people letting their hair down and having a good time, with the added far-fetched incentive that throwing the best party ever might just save their jobs. This means big, dumb fun set-pieces, crazy supporting characters and silly sub-plots ahoy.
Jillian Bell makes a memorable cameo as a fearsome, but strangely polite pimp. Karan Soni is the meek office nerd caught in a lie about dating a hot model, so has to bring a hooker to the party, leading to all sorts of improbable tomfoolery, including a bag of cocaine getting in the fake snow machine. Oops.
Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon is her usual fantastic self as stick-in-the-mud HR head Mary who, of course, reveals a wild side after a few shandies. Munn, in what could have been a one-note role, is also fabulous as the company’s computer genius who’s a potential love interest for Bateman’s character. She’s not just thinly-sketched eye-candy but manages to come off as cool, a strong female character who takes no sexist crap off anyone. She’s awesome and she knows it. There’s also some great comedy improv from a cast of recognisable comic support actors including Rob Corddry and Randall Park.
The party itself gets gloriously out of hand, with more than enough sex, drugs and irresponsible behaviour to go around – who the hell brought their kid to this thing? It’s decent fun, yet I can’t shake the feeling that it all should be a little wilder and funnier. Like most Christmas parties, I guess there are high expectations that are hard to meet.
To its credit, the film does find credible ways to squeeze a car chase and some impressive automobile stunts into a story about an office function, so well done to them for that. I also really enjoy some of the bonkers imagery, including a drunken, partying Jesus and naughty ice sculptures.
It's another thoroughly modern film for the confusing times we live in. There are plenty laughs, but we’re also reminded of the omnipresent capitalist evil of the wealthy trying to stay rich at the expense of everyone else. The film also takes aim at political correctness, particularly through Mary and her “non-denominational holiday sweater”. So worried about offending anyone, she only succeeds in annoying everyone and making herself look stupid. These days there seems to be a lot of people whose job is solely to make sure nobody is offended by anything. That must be exhausting.
The film is a little too predictable, but has enough laugh-out-loud moments and great performances from dependable, talented character actors to make for a solid, R-rated wild night out.
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