On 7th day of Christmas … I watched Office Christmas Party

Office Christmas Party wants to be funny.

Desperately, festively, stick-everything-into-the-script-that-isn’t-nailed-down funny.

And yet for all the (usually) luminously hilarious comedic talent hired, staging of over-the-top Christmas festivities and provocative posturing – allusions to a Human Centipede in the mens’ room anyone? No? Good choice – the film consistently fails to fire on just about every level going.

Like Santa’s picturesque sleigh becalmed on a snowy roof, restless reindeer shuffling before it, their power of magical flight gone, Office Christmas Party looks the part.

There’s the Chicago branch of Zenotek, a company selling computer servers to the same customers that might go to Dell or Cisco, in danger of closure and on or near Christmas eve no less! The battle between interim CEO sister Carol Vanstone (Jennifer Aniston), a hard-nosed, humourless businesswoman (hello cliche, the first of many) and her dilettante yet goodhearted playboy brother Clay (T. J. Miller) with just-divorced, conservative but again good-natured Chief Technology Officer Josh Parker (Jason Batemen) caught awkwardly in the middle. And, of course, the customer who will save their collective asses, Data City, whose representative Walter (Courtney B. Vance) is jaded and disinclined to award a major contract to Zenotek.

The solution, and shame on you for not seeing this coming, is to stage the very gigantic Christmas party that Carol has forbidden as part of a cost-cutting drive that will see 40% of the staff disappear, and which uptight, rules-rules-rules HR head Mary Winetoss (Kate McKinnon), whose surname fairly screams “This film is FUNNY! Look wacky name suggesting a more carefree get-your-freak-on nature just below the surface!”, will have conniptions about until she realises how much fun it is not to be socially and professional rigid and unyielding.

Walter, as is the way of these things – which things? It’s best you don’t even let your mind go there – will be convinced they are the company he wants to do business with, the branch, nay entire corporate entity will be saved, good-nay-heartwarmingly-great times will ensue and Christmas, hurrah!, will be saved.

Only it doesn’t quite work that way.

You don’t need to be a scriptwriting progeny to realise that everything goes horribly, terribly wrong, both party and film-wise.

The gigantic party, held in the company’s offices and assembled in just five busy hours – it’s possible to somewhat suspend disbelief here since this is a Hollywood movie and you’d want to attend a party full of funky DJs, sumo snowman costumes and Santa on a sled going down the internal stairs before running into a backlit nativity scene so let them have at it! – quickly goes wildly out of control, Walter is unimpressed and spending the last of his own money looks likely to deliver none of the expected benefits that Clay, who prays to God and his dead dad (awwww), envisages.

But hey, so much carnage follows, which includes but is not limited to naked photocopying, cocaine in the snow canon – unlike It’s a Wonderful Life, this is all you need to have a festive epiphany, war on drugs be damned! – and fiery Christmas tree jousting, that you can’t help but laugh anyway.

Wait, you’re not laughing? Good call because frankly there isn’t a lot to laugh about anyway. As noted, clearly screenwriters Justin Malen, Laura Solon and Dan Mazer think this is funny, so funny in fact that they convinced directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon to bring their redemptive/schlock crazy Christmas vision to life.

They throw everything into the mix from crazy office characters, one of whom mild-mannered accountant Fred (Randall Park) has mummy issues much to the horror and emotional exhaustion of Allison (Vanessa Bayer) who fancies him to a gung-ho security guard Carla (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and yet none of it really sticks (there’s even a crass joke about what’s all over the server after the party to go with that observation; see, everything in there but the proverbial!).

Yet for all that frenetic narrative overstuffing, and the many manic performances, Office Christmas Party is weirdly becalmed, spinning its wheels in a frantic effort to get somewhere uproariously festive and failing miserably and manifestly.

You are supposed to root for a bunch of people who aren’t necessarily unlikable – who could begrudge these cubicle warriors for wanting to hold onto their jobs and find love, sweet, love while they’re at it – Josh is naturally in love with his 2IC Tracey Hughes (Olivia Munn) but doesn’t know it yet, poor sweetly-unobservant sap – as they battle to hang onto their jobs with a raucous, burn-the-building-down party.

And while it would be nice to believe that this kind of ill-thought-out strategy to yield the hoped-for results, and let’s face it it’s a comedy so the usual real world rules simply don’t apply, the fact of the matter is that nothing really fires, all the pieces spinning aimlessly in place, begging to loved and laughed at.

This doesn’t happen of course, and even when the film changes tack and go for a perfect 10 point happy-ever-after corporate ending, it’s warm, fuzzy intent leaking from every pore, you are left cold and uninterested, simply wishing these people would leave you alone, endure the shutting down of their place of work and move on to better, less inebriated and far more circumspect lives.

It takes a special kind of talent to rob people as talented as Kate McKinnon, Rob Corrdry, Jillian Bell and T. J. Miller of their innate funniness but Office Christmas Party manages it, a cautionary reminder that you can throw an outrageous premise, crazily good comedic talent and some good old-fashioned humanity into a film and still come up wanting.

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