Employee of the Month

MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s 1:43 Long
A Review by:
The Dude on the Right

Employee of the Month
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Dane Cook, Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Andy Dick
MPAA Rated: PG-13
Released By: Lions Gate Films
Release Date: 2006
Kiddie Movie: Only if you want your son staring at Jessica’s boobs.
Date Movie: She’s got to be easily amused.
Gratuitous Sex: Low cut shirts and Vince being crude is about it.
Gratuitous Violence: Slaptstick.
Action: Nah.
Laughs: There’s a funny couple of lines.
Memorable Scene: Every scene being able to stare at Amy’s rack.
Memorable Quote: A great bit of advice before a date: “Don’t forget to wash your balls.”
Directed By: Greg Coolidge

Heading to my local gigaplex to catch a flick to review this weekend, I pretty much gave myself two choices, the Martin Scorcese epic “The Departed,” or the Greg Coolidge, umm, film, “Employee of the Month.” With it being a gorgeous day outside, I opted to save an hour stuck inside a movie theater and caught “Employee of the Month.” Maybe I should have just opted to save another extra hour and a half inside a movie theater.

Anyway, “Employee of the Month” gives us Dane Cook as Zack. He’s pretty much a slacker who lives with his Granny and works with group of slackers at the local bulk food mart, SuperClub, ala Costco. His nemesis is Vince (Dax Shepard), the head cashier and management suck-up who has been the employee of the month for the past 17 months. If he can be employee of the month for one more month, well, he wins a car and the love of the corporate boss.

Enter a new cashier, Amy (Jessica Simpson).

Amy transfers from another SuperClub, and Zack and her hit it off right from the start, mostly because they can finish each others sentences. Zack finds out from her employee file that at the previous store she seemed to have a thing for the employee of the month, and not wanting Vince to get the girl, Zack decides he will make a valiant attempt at employee of the month. And so the fight between Vince and Zack is on.

Yup, you can guess that Zack gets so wrapped up in beating Vince and becoming the model employee that he deserts his friends, eventually Amy will find out that at the start Zack just wanted to be the great employee to get in her pants, and in the end, Zack will learn his lesson and get the girl.

It’s a simple story, and the jokes are pretty much what you would expect, and no one here will be getting any accolades for their acting. Jessica Simpson looks like she got the role because all she has to do is smile and wear low-cut shirts (I’m guessing that her Dad, one of the Producers on the film, has no problem with that because we know how he admires her boobs), and Dane Cook didn’t seem to add to his comedic actor resume for this flick. I will say, though, that Dax Shepard does a great job as the smarmy Vince, which really helped redeem this film.

In the end I did laugh a couple of times during the film, so it wasn’t horrible, but really I would have to say this is a definite “wait for the rental” or “wait for cable” type of movie. It’s 2 stars out of 5 for “Employee of the Month.”

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!