Office Christ­mas Party

By attempt­ing to treat expend­able employ­ees as though they were fam­i­ly, office christ­mas par­ties present the clear­est visu­al­i­sa­tion of the hypocrisy cen­tral to prof­it-dri­ven busi­ness. This becomes all the more obvi­ous in the film Office Christ­mas Par­ty in which boss­es of the Chica­go branch of an inter­net com­pa­ny use the annu­al cel­e­bra­tion not so much as a treat for deserv­ing employ­ees, but rather as a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty to show a big client a good time and save the branch from termination.

It’s telling that the sense of crush­ing inhu­man­i­ty pow­er­ing this sit­u­a­tion, where busi­ness and social life are mor­phed togeth­er, is not treat­ed with the pro­found dis­dain and real exis­ten­tial dread found in films like Office Space or in both US and UK iter­a­tions of TV show The Office. Instead, this new film half-heart­ed­ly – and often with great dif­fi­cul­ty – strives to present the oppor­tunis­tic sce­nario as quite nor­mal, the back­drop for an esca­lat­ing com­e­dy of embar­rass­ment and gross out high-jinx.

A series of mis­er­able, com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed and heav­i­ly impro­vised jokes ensue. The char­ac­ters attempt to find humour in this awful sit­u­a­tion. Watch­ing the film feels like some­thing akin to scrolling down the Twit­ter time­line of a sad per­son attempt­ing to cheer them­selves up with bad-to-aver­age jokes. It goes with­out say­ing that this pro­found sense of anx­i­ety and sad­ness proves the very oppo­site of the Christ­mas spirit.

The film’s prob­lems, how­ev­er, stem not so much from the inher­ent humour­less­ness of the sto­ry, as from anoth­er, far more insid­i­ous ten­den­cy wit­nessed in mul­ti­ple post-Apa­tow Hol­ly­wood come­dies. Rather than putting in the work to con­struct a sol­id com­e­dy in the tra­di­tion­al sense – with events and char­ac­ters in the film being fun­ny to view­ers but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to the char­ac­ters with­in its world – this new breed of US com­e­dy appears like lots of slap­dash live record­ings of sec­ond-rate stand-up come­di­ans impro­vis­ing jokes in ran­dom sit­u­a­tions. In each instance, the humour stems not from the sto­ry, but from an unin­ter­rupt­ed series of non-sequiturs and inter­change­able one-lin­ers churned out by a cast of Sat­ur­day Night Live regulars.

The style admit­ted­ly does give each per­former a chance to shine. Yet most refuse to show any of their great tal­ent, instead play­ing shy or falling into bor­ing self-dep­re­ca­tion. Their jokes aren’t that fun­ny, and pur­pose­ful­ly so. Indeed, the whole enter­prise reeks of a kind of anti-wit, anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism and a paralysing appre­hen­sion towards being gen­uine­ly amus­ing, intel­li­gent or inter­est­ing. To make mat­ters worse, the stop-and-start rhythm of this sort of impro­vi­sa­tion­al com­e­dy is com­plete­ly at odds with the race-against-time sto­ry which requires a con­stant for­ward move­ment. To trade the sense of esca­la­tion for sit­com flat­ness is a jar­ring mismatch.

Only Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Jil­lian Bell dare to give any real arc to their char­ac­ters. They are the fun­ni­est per­form­ers in the film pre­cise­ly because they are not play­ing them­selves or come­di­an per­sonas dressed up in cos­tumes, con­stant­ly crack­ing jokes or pulling weird faces like the absolute­ly unbear­able Kate McKinnon.

Of course, the film nat­u­ral­ly asso­ciates this type of ​‘old-school’, intel­li­gent char­ac­ter com­e­dy with unlike­able char­ac­ters. Bell plays a bru­tal pimp while Anis­ton plays Car­ol Vanston, the com­pa­ny CEO who threat­ens to close the Chica­go branch man­aged by her unbear­ably irre­spon­si­ble and inex­plic­a­bly lucky broth­er Clay Van­stone (TJ Miller). In both his char­ac­ter and approach to busi­ness, Clay embod­ies the search for instant-grat­i­fi­ca­tion gleaned by min­i­mum effort that is also pro­mot­ed by the film’s lazy improv com­e­dy. It is Clay with whom we are encour­aged to iden­ti­fy. By con­trast accord­ing to the film’s weird log­ic his sis­ter Carol’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism and work eth­ic makes her large­ly unlike­able and dull. Unsur­pris­ing­ly in this fes­ti­val of mon­strosi­ties, the film sinks so low as to make Carol’s per­fect­ly com­mend­able atti­tude look bad by hav­ing it moti­vat­ed not by gen­uine busi­ness sense, but by resent­ment and spite.

Anis­ton all but redeems the film. In fact, watch­ing the sequences she dom­i­nates, you may find your­self dream­ing of a total reverse of Office Christ­mas Par­ty, imag­in­ing a ver­sion where her Car­ol deals with a host of ter­ri­bly infan­tile employ­ees whose puerile lifestyle is nev­er val­i­dat­ed as accept­able or ulti­mate­ly use­ful to suc­cess­ful busi­ness prac­tice. Under the guise of a cel­e­bra­tion of friend­ship over mon­ey, the film finds need­less­ly com­pli­cat­ed and uncon­vinc­ing ways to emu­late a pure­ly reac­tionary mes­sage. In the end, prof­it and a deus ex machi­na enabling prof­it are the only things that tru­ly matter.