kate mckinnon Archives | Straight From a Movie

Office Christmas Party is written in sheer fun. Josh Gordon and Will Speck’s entertainer is a movie that will crack you up at every juncture. It’s a party that would make you want to go to. It’s this contrasting placement of work with fun that makes the concept of Office Christmas Party a jovial hoot. Then again, the movie banks on its thriftless ostentation to get through but despite all the vulgarity and the bawdry, jokes still flow.

Plot of Office Christmas Party

You might think a movie like Office Christmas Party wouldn’t be having much to its plot if it’s all about showing blatant debauchery. But the movie proves you wrong the second it starts.

With awesome witty lines to bedeck its screenplay the movie chugs forward with Jason Bateman’s Josh Parker character trying to finalize his divorce. He is the Chief Technical Officer of a company called Zenotek. Olivia Munn’s character Tracey Hughes is the Head of Tech and is a girl brimming with outstanding ideas. T.J. Miller portrays Clay Vanstone, the branch manager who is as fun as he is in person. He is literally the life of the flick.

With the devilish character Carol Vanstone played by Jennifer Aniston, who is also the intermediate CEO of Zenotek, the story dabs its first throttle. She threatens to lay off 40% of its staff, cut bonuses and to cancel the inbound Christmas Party which everybody was so psyched about. Clay wishes to fight her off by roping in a huge client, Walter Davis played by Courtney B. Vance. What follows are acts of turpitude in order to please the client to save the Zenotek branch.

Comic Orgy (Spoilers Ahead)

As the movie progresses you realize that it paces up gradually. The party moves up a notch every second. Just like alcohol. It settles in and makes you feel better. We get to see funny characters like Rob Corddry, Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer, Randall Park, Karan Soni and Da’Vine Joy Randolph turn on their full-blown mode.

Jillian Bell’s Trina will force you to burst into laughter.

I don’t do handshakes, I do hugs.

When you see Jesus wading through the party arms spread on a horse, or when you see a reindeer in the toilet, or when you behold Jeremy drop the thumb sitting on the Game of Thrones chair, you feel you got your money’s worth. Watch out for such bits!

Also, it’s the presence of Olivia Munn in the movie that makes it a very satisfying watch. Her eyes do most of the talking and you can’t stop yourself from falling in love with her all over again. And she gives you a smart enough reason to keep it that way.

You can pre-order Office Christmas Party from here:

The Final Verdict

Office Christmas Party has all the elements one needs to helm a movie into an entertainer. It makes you laugh uncontrollably, but then at times it is outright stupid. But the thing with comedy is that you gotta live it, enjoy the reverberation and then laugh it off.

Christmas is almost here. Go watch this lunacy!

Check out the trailer of Office Christmas Party movie here:

A tribute to the original. Funny at times but falls flat big time. Anything about Ghostbusters and it takes us back in time. The Ivan Reitman project was hands down colossal. You watch it even in this era and it still manages to leave its impression on you. Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters comes nowhere close to bringing that old anxious charm of the original. It is funny alright, but there is nothing that could bring it close let alone surpass the levels of Reitman’s work.

DIRECTION AND PLOT OF GHOSTBUSTERS

Ghostbusters skims on the surface of the original, so there is nothing extraordinary that the movie has to offer, except for glimpses, characters and ghosts from the past that fill you up with nostalgia. There are plenty of elements from the 1984 gang strewn all across the movie. You might go, “Ah! There he is!” or “Oooh! Oooh! That’s from the old one!”

Clinging to the original fun theme of the movie, that neither goes too dark or stays too aloof from it, Ghostbusters manages to walk well on what it was proposed to canter on. However, there isn’t an element of surprise lurking anywhere here. The world Paul Feig creates is unaffected by ghosts, the multitude of dumbness, who stay unfazed by the lives of any ghostbuster, unaware of what’s going on. They seem to come in as they please, react when it seems fit to them.

Feig’s direction goes to awkward enclaves when he constantly keeps chopping off frames quickly moving on from one scene to another without caring enough for the audience to take it in. You can witness the shoddy editing go strangely awry at so many points that it creates a portal of disconnect.

GOOD BITS TO CHERISH

Chris Hemsworth as Kevin is probably the funniest thing in Ghostbusters. The only notable and memorable element that you might want to talk about in the long run, owing to the levels of dumbness he is shown scaling. Kristen Wiig’s Erin Gilbert has an instant apparent crush on him and she aces it with her superb comic timing.

Kate McKinnon builds up a strange character Jillian Holtzmann which is oddly satisfying. She does most of the work for the team. She has this eccentric cool style that will make you love her instantly.

CAMEOS AND GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST (SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY DU-UH!)

There are plenty of cameos to watch out for. First of all, all those major characters from the 1984 movie pop up every now and then at odd hours namely: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. Not to forget Annie Potts who reprises her role as the desk receptionist here as well. Ozzy Osbourne shows up at one point too which was a pleasant surprise. Slimer the green ghost gets to drive the Ecto 1. It was good to see him revived after so long.

The ugly part of it all was that their inclusion seemed oddly forced. There was no subtlety to it. No jokes flew when they were there and that makes it look utterly fabricated. Camera zooms in at a lot of places to deliberately show a past reference. Easter Eggs are like lying in front of the camera for 2 minutes for you to notice.

FINAL VERDICT

If you divide the movie in subsections, you will realize that the movie does fairly well in the first half. In the later half Ghostbusters’ humour simply drops dead. If you focus on how it manages to bring back every character from the past, you will have nothing less than goosebumps on your body. Humour comes naturally with the inclusion of Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. But if you look at it as a complete movie, sadly it fails to dilate your eyes.

Check out the trailer of Ghostbusters movie: