At the point when the CEO tries to close her hard-celebrating sibling's branch, he and his main tech-officer must rally their collaborators and host an epic office Christmas party with an end goal to inspire a potential customer and close a deal that will spare their jobs.
Yet another reminder that allowing your cast to madly improvise instead of actually providing a coherent script with a scintilla of logic often leads to a decline in sustained laughter.
Maybe it's because of all the depressing news... or ... the holidays and we are in dire need to see something lighthearted and, frankly, stupid right now, but this is temporarily satisfying. I guess that's all we can ask for this moment.
Office Christmas Party is a prime example of the pitfalls of throwing Hollywood resources at an under-developed screenplay, hoping the actors will save your ass on the set.
The celebration that goes too far is a movie comedy staple, but there's something a bit disturbing about Office Christmas Party's vision of corporate America self-immolating at the end of one terrible year.
The supporting characters are the people who are funny. They're the people we care about. And every time the movie cuts from their mad antics ... the whole film starts to deflate a little, like a Mylar balloon from the discount party store.
A joyless, laughless - that's right, not even one laugh - affair that proves how indulgent and (worse) boring ensemble comedies such as this become when the ensemble has next to no natural chemistry and even less of a script to riff off of.
There are large impressive stunts, pratfalls and chaos, but seldom does Office Christmas Party ever actually shock or delight in the way that it thinks it does.
