[.ca] Employee of the Month (Widescreen)

Nice comedy!:
This movie was quite entertaining. It is a quirky comedy with a charming and funny cast. The competition between two of the employees at Super Club is very amusing to watch. Dane Cook who plays Zack Bradley & Dax Shepard who plays Vince Downey are at war to win the "E of M" award... and the heart of Amy (Jessica Simpson), a new cashier. It's a good comedy to watch with friends or family. Great movie, good laughs... see for yourself!

\o2.5\c--This movie gets a triple discount:
One of the things I noticed about this movie was that it isn't another comedy where people sit around and mope about their dead-end jobs. In fact, the characters in this movie generally like their jobs and want to be good at them. Other films like Clerks and Office Space have done the job-loathing thing to perfection. I liked that this one went a different way. Granted, Zach initially likes his job primarily for the socialization, but he still learns to emulate his rival's conscientiousness. That the story finds honor rather than contempt in retail labor automatically makes it smarter than you might expect. "Employee of the Month is intentionally exaggerated in its depiction of the retail workplace. I'd enjoyed the film's approach. It takes an environment we're all familiar with and gives it a good warping. If "Employee of the Month" has a flaw - and I guess it does or else I wouldn't be mentioning it - it's that the 108-minute running time is too indulgent for the thinness of the plot. Everything could be said and done just as effectively in 90 minutes, especially since it's pretty obvious where the story is heading anyway. The movie does have it's moments, The two actors really make the picture work. Cook melds the vintage movie slacker prototype with his own inherent charm to turn Zack into a guy we actually root for. Shepard, on the other hand, brings freshness to the now-stereotypical jerk character. He plays up Vince's buffoonery and vanity rather than making him a standard hateful comedy villain. Jessica Simpson wasted her whole on screen performance trying to remember her lines. There were times I believed she may have used cue cards. Simpson should quit acting and seriously stick to singing. The whole time I sat there asking myself, 'how could any director in their right mind let a performance like this end up in their finished feature film?' Then when the credits rolled, I got my answer. Simpson's father was one of the film's producers. Cook's friends are made up of an all star supporting comedy cast (Harland Williams, Andy Dick) which flounders in this film. Andy Dick plays the guy with coke-bottle glasses who can't see anything, wasn't this joke played out on Saturday Night Live in the 60's? And the Indian electronics salesman bit was already done better in "40 Year Old Virgin." And we're forced to laugh at yet another joke about a midget as an authority figure. I will agree that midgets are funny on screen. But this play against type is old and done. The movie does have a couple laugh out loud moments involving a "piece-of-crap Honda" and a race sequence to clean up a spill in isle 6. But again, those funny moments are few and far between. "Employee of the Month" is a missed opportunity on almost every level and the box office clearly shows that.