Give this one the sack. (Employee of the Month (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Employee of the Month (DVD)
Date:	30.05.07 (179 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A couple of good scenes, Dax Shephard

Disadvantages: Most everything else

Employee of The Month is obviously relying on its premise to sell itself as it has no big stars in it at all, Jessica Simpson is the only big name and she is not exactly known for her ability as an actress.
Employee of the month has a simple idea, one that should be full of comedy potential, strangely though, while it is slightly enjoyable on a very lowbrow level, it just is not funny. The main reason for this is that the comedy doesn’t work most of the time. Whether this is down to the flat script or to the fact that the direction just does not take advantage of the situation the plot has set up I don’t know.

The plot of the movie is based around Zack (Dane Cook), the ultimate slacker, who has been working for a big discount store, read Walmart, for ten years and has no aspirations of any kind. He is still the lowest of the low in the company hierarchy… a box boy, the person who boxes up the good as you go through the till. He is friends with everyone in the store though, more or less, due to his laid back approach to things and his overall nice guy attitude, he just doesn’t care about anything at all.
Vince (Dax Shephard) on the other hand is the super smooth head cashier. He has worked his way up through the jobs and management beckons. He has been employee of the month 17 months on the trot and if he makes it number 18 this month he will have set a new company record. He has also just won the fastest cashier in the South competition and works with such style and pizzazz that all the female customers adore him, even if the staff, and especially Zack, doesn’t!

Life is good for the both of them until Amy (Jessica Simpson) transfers to their store. She is a beautiful, young stunning blonde and when they first see her they target her as a potential date/conquest. When Zack discovers that she has a history of dating the employee of the month from her last store the stage is set for their animosity to reach all new levels!

Employee of the Month has a great trailer and an outline of an idea that sounds intriguing enough and certainly has reams of possibilities. It should have been so much better than it was but manages to lose sight of it’s comedic aims in almost every way. It starts of ok, the differences between the two male leads attitudes and the smarmyness of Vince is reasonably amusing, especially his almost homoerotic relationship with his ‘box boy’ Jorge. Once Amy arrives though and Zack’s character starts to change the film starts rolling downhill faster than Scooby Doo can run from a ghost!

The films biggest mistake, in my eyes, is the Zack character. While likeable at first that soon changes when he decides to go for the girl and the Employee of The Month accolade. His three best friends at work, his fellow slackers, have their own secret clubhouse at in the warehouse, cover each others shifts when they need time off and hate all management, Zack forgets all about them in his desire to achieve his aims, in fact he ignores them and worse. What he becomes is someone worse than Vince. Vince has always been that way and you can almost excuse him for the way he is, after all he is what he is. Zack becomes more like Vince in his attempt to win the girl and because of that it becomes hard to actually cheer him on. He becomes as dislikeable as Vince, the supposed villain of the piece! This is a major downside as the group dynamic doesn’t work when the ‘hero’ isn’t a nice guy. When he is a slacker he is cool, someone you can admire, you wish you could have his laid back attitude to life. Unlike most of these kind of films though you feel like he is as much the person he becomes as the slacker, rather then he is creating a false persona to achieve his aims.

Shephard as Vinnie is very good in his role, when he is on the screen the movie was miles better. Vince is annoying & irritating but this is what his character is meant to be and it is down to Shephard that he comes across so like that.
Cook and Simpson were nothing special at all, there was no chemistry between them at all, a big problem when that is the major focus to pushing forward the storyline. It does have to be said though that the script doesn’t do anything for either character, the comedy workplace part might be well written but the romance side certainly isn’t.
The next best character is Jorge, Vince’s sidekick, the repartee between the two of them is really the best part of the film. I really liked the relationship between the two of them is a curious one, you are never entirely sure about how the bond between them actually worked.

All in all Employee of The Month is a film that cannot be recommended in any way really. It has a few good bits in it but it never really gets going past first gear, which is a shame because the actual idea is a pretty good one. Avoid at all costs!

Oh and for real film fans there is a great little in joke with the names of the boss and his brother. One is named Glen Garry and the other Glen Ross… that probably gave me the biggest laugh in the film!

Second little bit of info is that this is, I think, the very first time I have seen Heelies used in a film. Nothing that interesting but something that stood out for me.

Summary: watch the destruction of a great idea