Employee of the Month: Critic Reviews

There's a crumb of an idea to setting a movie at a mega-mart that makes the Office Space cubicles look like executive suites, but the results in Employee of the Month are toothless.

Directed by Greg Coolidge with the flair of a training video, Employee of the Month turns work into a game and love into a sporting event.

Reasonably entertaining, though probably better as a DVD rental.

You're bound to have more fun working overtime than watching Employee of the Month.

Rarely has an actress exuded such blank nothingness as Simpson, a one-woman vapid delivery system who sucks the energy and joy out of every scene she's in, like some freakishly well-endowed black hole.

[Cook's] enthusiasm for speeding through a bulk-item megastore in a race to please his corporate masters might endear him, anecdotally, to Hollywood producers and executives, but it's sad and never very funny.

Just like a real job, Greg Coolidge's workplace comedy Employee of the Month offers long, slow stretches lightened by a few laughs and some oddball characters.

Lest anyone mistake this for a Marxist tract, there are additional riffs on Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, fat people and the developmentally disabled.

There's a great Office Space-style satire to be made about big-box stores screwing their working-poor employees, but Hollywood studios covet DVD rack space at those same stores.

Employee of the Month is a comedy as vacuous and tacky as the discount big-lot stores it imagines it is spoofing.

Mostly the film just rattles annoyingly along like a shopping cart with a jiggly wheel.

Employee of the Month had the opportunity to be a great satirical workplace comedy. Instead, it balked at the challenge and relegated itself to the romantic-comedy basement.

Pic's midsection, with the increasingly likable Zack threatening to overcome Vince's early lead, is unexpectedly funny and involving.

Attention, comedy shoppers: The marked-down movie Employee of the Month has more laughs than most of the name-brand products.

Whatever that 'it' is that comic screen stars have, Cook doesn't have it. The timing isn't there, the sparkle, the Ryan Reynolds sneer. He's just bland.

The aggrieved employee movie genre is one of the more puzzling fads of late, since it showcases every vile prejudice and low standard imaginable.

it's simply too depressing that people sat in a boardroom, read this script and said, 'We're ready to go!'

The wry, character-driven humor picks up enough momentum to carry it through to the checkout desk.

Jessica Simpson, Dane Cook, Dax Shepard and colleagues will not be in the running for Hollywood's employee of the month for their new comedy.

There are people who think Cook is funny, but you won't find any evidence of that here.

This may be a just-for-fun comedy, but that shouldn't mean that it must entirely disconnect from the world.

Predictable, crude comedy aimed at teens.

This vapid, laugh-lite romp won't satisfy anyone. Except die-hard Jessica Simpson fans.

...there's ultimately very little here to appeal to even the most die-hard Cook fanatic.