When the middle of a comedy is blah, you look to the margins for distractions. There are a few of those in “Employee of the Month,” which is how this nothing movie is bearable.
And the blah center? Well, it starts with leads Dane Cook, who is a comedian, and Jessica Simpson, who is famous for being famous. And then there’s the plot.
Cook plays a slacker working on the lowest rung at Super Club, one of those membership stores where people buy bulk-discount products like keg-sized vats of olive oil and car-sized bags of cereal.
He lives in the shadow of the Albuquerque store’s legendary cashier (Dax Shepard), a man who has won the “Employee of the Month” award for 17 consecutive months.
Because of his own idiocy, or the screenwriters’, Cook becomes convinced that he can sleep with a new cashier (that’s Jessica Simpson) if he wins the next monthly contest. Of course, he’ll have to outpoint Shepard, who has the eye of the tiger.
There are morals about growing up and getting serious and other grisly life lessons contained here. Cook is a shaggy presence, likable enough but far too square to be convincing as a slacker living at home with his grandmother. He’s much more a class president type, despite the three-day growth of beard.
Jessica Simpson is a study in cleavage and self-consciousness. There may be something authentic about her, but as yet it has not been photographed on film.
As the villain, Dax Shepard livens things up considerably. This inspired actor made an impression on the TV show “Punk’d” and in the otherwise rotten movie “Without a Paddle,” and it’s only a matter of time before he’s a star. His line readings give new meaning to the principle of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. (During the film, I kept thinking how much better the film would be if the two men switched roles; it turns out that’s how the picture was originally cast.)
He’s also got a good sidekick in Efren Ramirez, who achieved some kind of immortality as the deadpan Pedro in “Napoleon Dynamite.” Shepard and Ramirez have a couple of zonked-out exchanges in a car that create a certain surreal hilarity.
And reliable comedians such as Andy Dick, Tim Bagley and Harland Williams scare up a few laughs around the edges. But that’s around the edges; for too long we’re stuck with the main story. The setting could have offered up some “Office Space”-style satire, but this movie is just stacking shelves.
Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson star in “Employee of the Month.”
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