Employee of the Month (2006)

Directed by: Greg Coolidge | 103 minutes | comedy | Actors: Dane Cook, Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Efren Ramirez, Andy Dick, Tim Bagley, Brian George, Marcello Thedford, Danny Woodburn, Harland Williams, Sean Whalen, Barbara Dodd, Kathleen Arc, John Hardman, Adriana Cordova, Jenny Gabrielle, Emily Sandberg, Taylor Warden, Susse Budde, Shirly Brener, Donna Cromer, Alison Raimondi, William Sterchi, Robin Timpanaro

‘Employee of the Month’ is all about Zack (Dane Cook), whose lazy, unmotivated layabout has suddenly developed the ambition and dream of becoming employee of the month. It can’t be that hard, can it? In addition to being an actor, Cook himself is also a stand-up comedian, who contributed greatly to the film; he knows how to get the joke across to the audience. But where he is just so funny, he is unfortunately just a little less acting. That should not spoil the fun because he is assisted by good co-actors and nice dialogues. Zack (but also Dane himself) has a worthy adversary in all areas, but especially humor in his rival Vince (Shepard). The relatively new name in Hollywood, Dax Shepard, probably causes the loudest laugh. As the competitive Vince, he wants to prevent packer Zack from stealing his ‘Employee of the Month’ title, and with it the popular new girl. With his smart personal assistant Jorge (Efren Ramirez) he forms a duo that mainly relies on the hilarious looks of Dax and the laughable dialogues in which Jorge always manages to have the last word.

You can get around the girl, of course: Jessica Simpson is Amy, and she’s what Zack and Vince are actually fighting so hard about. Whatever you think of her, La Simpson isn’t as bad as some critics claim. In ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ she already proved that she can act reasonably well, and here too she does not do so badly. Indeed, she probably won’t win an Oscar, but the Razzie nomination she got for this role was really more subjective than objective. In any case, Simpson knows how to hold his own between two top comedians. In addition to these three, there are also roles, including Andy Dick, who is nice, but not at his funniest. There’s also Tim Bagly and Danny Wood as the unlikely brothers Glen Gary and Glen Ross. The latter, played by Wood, is the literally smaller brother of Glen Gary (Bagly), but despite that he has Gary quite a bit. Nevertheless, it is Bagly who stands out the most of the two, because he is the better actor of the two.

The strength of ‘Employee of the Month’ is not so much the jokes or the story itself (which can be quite cliché at times), but the fact that obviously no one takes themselves – let alone the story – seriously. How could it be different; in ‘Employee of the Month’ the employees make a big deal out of the most trivial things. And the more absurd, the better! That only makes for more casual and sincere humor. Well, the concept may not be original, but the interpretation is strong. All in all: ‘Employee of the Month’ for “Comedy of the Month”!