Review of Office Christmas Party (2016) by Gavin P — 07 Dec 2016

'Office Christmas Party' does what it says on the box - it's a comedy revolving around a workplace Christmas Party in Chicago. It used to be a family business, but now Clay (Miller) runs the office and his sister Carol (Aniston) is trying to shut him down. Josh (Bateman) is the CTO and Tracey (Munn) his IT head/love interest. To boost morale, Clay, Josh & Tracey decide to have a huge Christmas Party - and the debauchery ensues.

The support cast is pretty great - Mary from HR (McKinnon, in a terrible Xmas jumper), Jeremy from Customer Relations (Corddry, always funny), Fred from Accounts (Park, with his weird fetish) and Nate from IT (Soni, almost his same cab-driver character from 'Deadpool', great to watch), plus a crazy pimp (Bell). The plot is pretty thin and padded with a car chase and the typical "rave to some techno" scenes. The "love story" between Josh & Tracey is almost non-existent.

It's the same directors that bought us 'The Switch' with Bateman and Aniston, but it's nowhere near as fun or inventive as 'Horrible Bosses', or last year's 'The Night Before' - and as far as "adult" Christmas films go, not even close to 'Bad Santa'. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments, and a few good jokes thrown in, but often it seems like it's being crude or stupid for no reason.