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Poor Jessica Simpson. Not long ago, she was a superstar with a hit album and a hit reality TV show, not to mention a gorgeous husband who put up with the fact that she’s not sure if tuna is chicken or fish. Jessica was on top of the world. But now Jessica’s little sister, Ashlee, and her new nose are The New Jessica. They’re starring in a musical in London while Jessica is stuck at home alone with her creepy dad, getting collagen injections in her lips and trying to act in bad comedies. Life is tough sometimes, Jess.
In Employee of the Month, Jess plays Amy, the new cashier at Super Club. As soon as she walks through the door, two of her coworkers decide that she’s the girl for them.
Vince (Dax Shepard) is the Number One Cashier—and the record-holding fastest cashier in Super Club history. Every single day (since, apparently, he never gets a day off), he gets the store’s prized Gold Star—and every month for the last seventeen months, he’s been named Employee of the Month. If he wins one more month, he’ll be honored with a huge celebration—and he’ll get a new-ish Chevy Malibu.
Zack (Dane Cook), on the other hand, is the store slacker. He’s been a lowly box boy for ages, but he knows how to keep a low profile and just slide by. When Amy arrives, he manages to get his hands on her personnel file—and he discovers that she asked to be transferred because of her tendency, at her old store, to sleep with the Employee of the Month.
And the battle for Employee of the Month is on.
On the bright side, Employee of the Month isn’t quite as painful as I thought it would be. Overall, the movie is mildly amusing. Sure, the laughs are often cheap—and there aren’t as many of them as there could have been—but they’re laughs nonetheless. In the beginning, it shows potential—and I started to think that I hadn’t driven into the middle of a tornado warning and waded through a flooded theater parking lot for nothing. But then it fizzles out. The jokes are the same old thing—and they stop being funny. The loss of humor and the painfully predictable plot make the last half drag on much too long.
Dane Cook is one of the bright spots in the movie—he’s not bad to look at, and he does a pretty good job. As for Jessica, the film focuses on just a pair of her talents—and I don’t mean singing and acting. But, fortunately for her, I’m sure that much of the audience will be sufficiently distracted by her low-cut sweaters, and they won’t notice that she can’t actually act.
If you’re looking for a movie about the regular working guy, you’re better off with Waiting…. Or, better yet, go with a classic and watch Office Space instead.
