Posted: 10/13/2006

Employee of the Month

(2006)

by Clint Fletcher

Whether or not you’re a fan of comedian Dane Cook won’t really affect your opinion of this picture. While I am a huge fan of the man, I know plenty of people who think he isn’t funny at all. Fear not, my fellow readers. Cook is only in this film as an actor, not as a writer or producer. As an actor (or leading man, rather), I find him to have a certain charisma about him that makes him enjoyably watchable. It’s because of Cook and his fellow actors that make Employee of the Month worth seeing.

Perhaps Employee should be called Office Space 2, because that’s exactly what it felt like. Your opinion should now boil down to whether or not you enjoyed Office Space. If you did, chances are you’ll dig Employee of the Month. It tells the story of an intelligent guy stuck at a low-class job at a warehouse superstore (think Costco). While he doesn’t enjoy his job, he does enjoy slacking at his job with his buddies (comedians Andy Dick and Harland Williams). Instead of working, they spend most of their time in a secret lounge, playing poker and making fun of the constant employee of the month kiss-ass (Dax Shepard). But if anything can shake Cook out of his lazy tree, it’s Jessica Simpson’s boobs. As a new cashier, Simpson attracts every male in sight, especially Cook after he learns that she’s attracted to hard-working “employee of the month” types. We now have our plot—Cook decides to take on Dax Shepard to become employee of the month and get the girl.

The movie is surprisingly entertaining, and all the actors bring it on home with their characters, especially Dax Shepard. Even Andy Dick and Harland Williams are funny, and usually they’re too over-the-top to be enjoyable. And, of course, Jessica Simpson can’t act for shit, but you guys already knew that. At least she’s not bad enough to take you out of the story. And I also dug the cute love angle between Cook and Simpson, and the date sequences were played out nicely (really enjoyed the “date inside the warehouse” scenes). I also liked the class separation of the characters, such as the evil cashiers vs. the blue-collar box boys.

Okay, okay, so the movie starts to get into cliché territory in the last half-hour, but damn if I didn’t mind because this baby is filled with classic one-liners and unique characters. You could really tell the actors were having a blast making it, and Shepard and Cook’s improv skills are top-notch. The trailers are advertising it as a stupid, slapstick comedy and while it does have its moments of cheesiness, the movie is so much more than that. Most of the comedy is derived from the dead-serious scenes of the Cook and Shepard competition. Shot in extremely dramatic form, the movie is filled with tons of slow-motion sequences, shots of people crying, throwing tantrums, etc. But this just makes the movie even funnier.

This flick has a certain quirkiness to it that many will find endearing. Not to mention, this type of work environment is easy to relate to—everything from the annoying shift managers to the hard-ass corporate bosses to the employee of the month suck-up. If you’ve ever worked at a job like this or enjoyed flicks like Clerks and Office Space, this movie is for you.

Clint Fletcher is a film critic and screenwriter living in the Midwest.

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