Office Christmas Party fares well in its debut weekend

Office Christmas Party raked in $17.5 million on its debut weekend. 
Photo provided by: Youtube

Office Christmas Party is a holiday comedy that was released on Dec. 9. It stars Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, TJ Miller, Olivia Munn and Kate McKinnon. It is directed by both Josh Gordon and Will Speck.

A very talented cast plays a group of office mates that throw a holiday party in order to impress a potential client which could ultimately save their branch from getting closed, though things get sorely out of hand.

The film raked in $17.5 million in its debut weekend, which is the most successful Christmas movie debut in the month of December, as most of the holiday classics have come out in November.

Bateman and Miller make a great double act. Bateman plays the serious technical officer in contrast to Miller’s outlandish style of leadership. Aniston plays a cold CEO, which she does very well. Kate McKinnon is really starting to gain momentum in the movie business and she plays a hilariously vanilla HR representative.

There was really nothing to notice about the camera work. It did its job but it was definitely nothing special. Utilization of different angles and shots would’ve spiced up this holiday movie a lot. The story is definitely interesting, and the star-studded cast attracted a lot of people to theaters.

The start of the movie was fairly boring, using too many comedy cliches to count. As the story started to pick up and the party started, that’s when the movie started to get funny. The humor used was sadly very unoriginal, drawing from a shock factor that is now used too often. The raunchy and gross antics bring a chuckle for a second, yet is nothing that impresses the audience. Overuse of profanity and vulgarity causes the movie to seem disappointingly unintelligent.

In summary, Office Christmas Party is a funny enough movie for the holiday season, but it is not worth the money to see in theaters. Wait for it to come out on video and it’ll be a good comedy to watch with friends during a winter movie night.