Midweek Mention... Office Christmas Party

Office Christmas Party

Dan: The old office Christmas party. Must have a few stories over the years.

Sidey: Well, nothing like in this.

Cris: Well, I've never worked in an office, so, I mean, I have, but for Pete, so that's, does that

Dan: That ruined

Cris: No, it ruined my life.

Dan: earlier off air, Dan,

Reegs: about you told me earlier off Air Dan, that you've been that guy at the

Christmas

Dan: guy at the Christmas

Reegs: That guy? Yeah. Which is interesting. In your younger

Dan: younger

Reegs: yeah.

Sidey: My work

The summer party, this year. Was fucking wild. There was loads of shenanigans at that.

Our Christmas party was just tame in terms of the lots of drunkenness and whatever, but nothing like fairly sedate in terms of anecdotes on Monday morning. But we have a Madeira office, and I won't say the name of our company, but there's an ambulance had to be called to that one on

Dan: that

Reegs: Right.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Proper party.

Reegs: Well, we had a thing. I didn't go to the Christmas party, but,

Sidey: but um, yeah, yours is on

Saturday. Yeah, but

Reegs: And it was big, glitzy, glamorous affair. So that was, you know, straightaway introvert. No, thanks. this is one guy got rumbled with a little satchel of naughty things.

And he Is coincidentally the face of an internal marketing campaign about Bradford factor and like phoning in when you're sick. So he was obviously caught with this bag of things and then his face is emblazoned across everybody's computer screen, pretending to be ill

Dan: to be ill.

Reegs: of a marketing campaign.

It's lovely

Dan: ha ha. Brilliant, yeah,

Sidey: Is, is he still there?

Reegs: I don't know.

Sidey: There might be a procedure.

Yeah. Disciplinary one. This is a 2016 movie. It's called Office Christmas Party. If I wasn't abundantly clear I for some reason thought that it was from the same universe as horrible bosses because it has.

Dan: Jason

Sidey: Jason Bateman and, and

Cris: it. And Jennifer Anon.

Sidey: Aniston and they have it's not, so to make it clear, it is not.

Reegs: not. Horrible Bosses was pretty good as well,

Sidey: Horrible, I haven't seen Horrible Bosses 2, I don't think, but Horrible Bosses 1 is okay. I think it was sort of one of the first times that Jennifer Aniston was playing against Type, you know, as the,

Reegs: she was a

Sidey: girl next door.

Reegs: being in that one, wasn't

Sidey: And in this, she's a mega bitch, you know, this like, uh, woman in charge of a, of a, can't, so a woman in charge of a business can't be anything other than a mega fucking bitch because that's just how it works.

The writing in this is like, shallow like that.

Reegs: Yeah. Nice.

Sidey: It's, I'm just going to start panning it right from the get go. Jason Bateman is just One of the most typecast people,

Reegs: doing his

Sidey: he's doing a Jason Bateman thing where he's the normal every man trying to make sense of these crazy situations. His,

Reegs: I usually like that though, a little

Sidey: he's great at it.

He's great at it, but it's pretty boring. You know, this really is, michael Bluth kind of, you know, rest of development style stuff, which has been done brilliantly once already, but, you know, we're just kind of like retreading old ground here. His coworker, he's the, I think he's the chief technology officer of this business which is called Xenotech.

And they're a internet service provider or something.

Reegs: Oh, that's interesting.

Sidey: and

they have various different offices. And it's his So the guy that's in charge of that particular office is played by T. J. Miller. I think he might have been cancelled now. But this is 2016.

Reegs: this?

Oh, right,

Sidey: He was Remember him?

Cris: yeah. yeah, the guy, I think he's quite funny, that guy.

Is he, why is he cancelled?

Reegs: Oh, sex pest.

Sidey: Some, yeah,

Cris: Oh, right, okay.

Sidey: allegedly, allegedly. In case that's not true. he's the, he's the boss of the office. His sister is Jennifer Aniston, who's the CEO of

Dan: Interim.

Sidey: the whole thing. And he's just in charge of this one branch, which was the dad's branch. It's the Chicago branch, I think.

Dan: And

Sidey: And they go for a walk, him and Jason Bateman. And they point out all these things, which you know you know, at the time that they're talking about them, they're so. like superfluous, but you know, it's so obvious. They talk about there's a bridge that goes up, you know, and he's like, I wonder how fast you'd have to drive over that bridge to make the jump to the other side.

And you're like, like, well, I'll count down the minutes till that happens later on in the film. It's like that. Everything's very predictable. Jennifer Aniston comes in and wants to shut down the branch because it's, it's only made seven and a half percent profit or growth. She wants it to achieve 12 and she's going to get rid of 40 percent of the workforce.

There's also no bonuses. And no party

Dan: No christmas

Sidey: so they come up with this plan that if they can get this one guy to sign up his account which is worth something like 14 million of revenue year. Then she'll

be happy with that and everything will be okay. So she fucks off.

She's going back. She's flying to Heathrow. And she says, by the time I land, you need to give me the good news or you're fucking like my original plan was to shut down the branch. That's what I'm going to do. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So their plan is that they're going to throw the party. And they're going to get this Walter Davis to the party and just kind of like try and impress him and sweet talk him.

It's literally, it's that level

Dan: How fantastic they all are because they're all very clicky in the

Reegs: their mind and,

Dan: they're all you know Laughing and joking and they're a good team.

They're basically and he thinks that they they deserve to be saved

Sidey: They've set up this plot device of a guy, a nerdy like techy coding guy. Mm-hmm. , of. Having he's told everyone that he's got a girlfriend that she's a model and they're all just calling his bullshit They oh, you know, she's been on bullshit monthly magazine cover and all this sort of stuff.

And so No, he hires an escort

So there's this thing about the pimp who's this bipolar girl Who seems to be really cheery at first and then just like instantly pulls a gun on him. So he brings a prostitute to the party who introduces a load of drugs.

Which one?

Reegs: a prostitute.

Cris: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Sidey: No, no and no.

So it's a very, very elaborate party. There's all kinds of stuff going on. There's a DJ, but it's one of the guys. It's actually probably one of the funnier characters in it. There's the bar where they've got this ice sculpture. It has a dick or at least it's holding it's holding a funnel but it looks like a dick.

And they pour eggnog through it so it looks

Reegs: So Jason

Sidey: Yeah. So Jason Bateman has to deep throw and he actually like holds the ball.

his,

his right hand lady is played by Olivia Munn is super hot. And she has voiced at this board meeting when they talk about the the growth and the revenue targets, etc.

God, it sounds like my work.

That she has this concept for, again, it's one of these things that you know is going to be the savior

of if they can somehow Transmit the internet signal through any electronic

Dan: any

any light

Sidey: And it's called anywhere

Dan: lamp or anything. So you wouldn't

Reegs: that passes an electrical current can now also conduct to the internet.

Dan: exactly. And that would mean that you don't have any internet outages ever and

Reegs: Internet would be everywhere all

Dan: Yes.

So, again, you know,

Reegs: That's quite a good idea.

Hold

Sidey: for

the.

Dan: Hold for the. And so

Sidey: And so they, the party kicks off and you know, obviously the whole thing is that the party is going to get out of hand and

there's,

Dan: She's just dancing,

Sidey: dancing.

We've got Kate McKinnon. She's, she's hands down the best character in this. She's the head of HR. She's good in this, she's good in Barbie as well. She's good in this, she's Like, massively, massively risk adverse about everything. Like for comedic effect and she's

Dan: got a constant like, ding dong with a guy from marketing as well.

Sidey: Is that, is that Lugol,

Dan: yeah, the bald guy who eventually have a bit of a dance off.

Sidey: You remember the guy, the really trashy guy from hot tub time machine. That's him. He's good in this. She, she's wearing a multi-faith Christmas jumper. She refuses to show in his skin and then until everything starts to break down

Reegs: What's on there? Are you got um what what have we

Sidey: Hanukkah, you've got dw, you've got

Reegs: a sort of but

Sidey: That's, that's on there. Yeah. I think that's the

Reegs: kind of, is it right? I'm gonna say something really awful now but is it made up? Is it

one

Sidey: all made up.

Reegs: yes, that's true but is of those that sprung up like 15 minutes ago? I don't know what I'm ignorant. I don't know what Kwanzaa is.

Sidey: I don't know, I think it's best to be ignorant about everything.

Reegs: I suppose. Yeah.

Sidey: So that's there. She's really risk averse. So everything that starts to happen in the party, she's like worrying about and blah, blah, blah, blah,

Dan: the sound levels, the language,

Sidey: the But the party is in the office. So it's kind of like Nakatomi Plaza.

It's all f ing kicking off in this office block. And everything starts to get out of hand. The guy that they really want to get the business from, he shows up. He's very, very formal. He's not into it. He's just like, no, I think I'm going to leave, and the prostitute, she's dishing out handjobs to everyone, and a lot of drugs are flying around, and she puts her bag down, and a gigantic bag of something, I don't know what it could be, falls out, and it, there's, right by, convenient by the snow machine, so they think, HR lady, HR lady thinks that it's the stuff that generates the snow, she chucks it in, and it just fucking ignites right in this Walter Davis's face.

Dan: Who's on his way out. He can't be bothered to stay for the party. He's taking his business. He's had a nice time Five minutes

Reegs: now he's had a face full

Sidey: He's like Rambo.

Reegs: so

Dan: minutes late you see him saying it's the best party i've ever been to shirts coming

off

Sidey: TJ Miller has had him, when he was sober, on the balcony saying, like, like, like, what we need to do, we'll get these, these, these fucking like, elaborate light decorations that go from the mezzanine like right across is like let's just let's just grab those and we'll like Tarzan across and the guy's like we're fucking doing that sure enough like a half an hour in he he does this like shouts out this fucking thing like i'm gonna live dangerously and he just jumps off and just fucking facepalms into

Dan: weight whatsoever. It doesn't swing

Sidey: he lands on a cupboard

Dan: Yeah, it's like on a fight, on a fight. It hit about three hits on the way down staircase, filing cabinet onto the floor. And, and then he gets up, you know, the let's party. Like everybody's just going nuts. I'm okay.

And cause he's, he's high as a kite. No, he's off to the ambulance soon after that.

Reegs: Right, so they're all trapped in the building.

Sidey: flight gets cancelled. She gets an uber back to town and here's the uber driver says I just dropped three of your co workers off at their party. She's like, well, I cancelled the party. Well, as it turns out, no, you didn't. So she goes there. Everything's just escalating like more and more and more.

And there's been a, you know, one of those sort of like Facebook posts where there's a party, you know, there's a party and it just gets out of hand and all these randoms are there. There's bonfires, they've got like a thing of all the office chairs and stuff right in the middle.

Dan: Girl is just trying to keep the peace downstairs Yeah, and Aniston comes up and she's pretty, pretty pissed off with it all.

She hasn't you know, it's going to come to a head where they're going to have to start having, you know, the, the conversations because her and her brother just don't get on.

Sidey: Well,

it turns out that he has

He's,

they paint him as just being a complete dickhead party animal doesn't really know what he's doing and what it turns out is that he has been using his trust fund his portion of the family wealth to prop up the failing business.

So everything all the, you know, all the events have been put on all the stuff for staff. He's been paying for it all. And so you're supposed to go, Oh, he's all right. And it turns out I think he's only got 300 grand left, but he for reasons. He was gonna give

Dan: when he was going to give it as a bonus. And what it was going to be was this money exploding machine that was

Reegs: That's a good idea.

Dan: body. And he wanted to, they even had like, you know, like the crystal maze where you've got to grab

Sidey: the cards. they,

Dan: they had the bonus box.

It was like the size of a phone box. And. You had to go in there, like, to get your Christmas bonus. You had 30 seconds or whatever, so that would be good fun in a, in a party. Um, so, she's really not pleased with this. She just wants to, to close

Sidey: Well, the prostitute's got wind of the cash, hasn't she? She knows that there's this three hundred, three hundred thousand. And lets the pimp know, because the pimp's about to execute someone. She says, no, no, no. There's money to be made here. Don't, let's not just fucking do something rash.

Let's get the money. And this is where it gets into, they take him in the car. Jason Bateman gets wind of it, they get into Ruth, the HR lady's minivan, and chase, and this is where you get the

Reegs: jump over the

Sidey: Oh, here we go now with the, can we make this jump over the bridge? But they don't do it, they boll it, I don't think they had the budget to do it.

So they kind of collide and crash. Because so he could have dated Olivia Munn's character, but he bottled it and she thinks he's Mr. Safe So is to try and prove a point. He's like I'll kill us all And then you'll see that I'm not Mr. Safe. I think that was a great idea Yeah, it does he fingers

Dan: Loves the bad boys. Yeah I'm struggling to remember where it finished, but it did definitely finish soon after this.

Sidey: gets injured. So in the crash, in the crash, like Jennifer Aniston's brother, TJ Miller, he, he ends up in hospital. They have a heart to heart where he apologizes for being such a douche. Walter

Dan: davis comes in holding his ribs saying it's the best party ever. We will work with

Sidey: but it turns out That he had been fired by his company. So he never had the ability to make the contract with them anyway, when he said, I want to work with you, he thought he was just getting a job. So they, there's no money, there's no contracts, no 40 million of extra revenue. But what has happened is the car, when they've crashed the car, it's gone into some building.

And they even say, I don't know what we just crashed into. But somehow they've Outed all of the internet in the entire fucking city and everyone's trying to do their Christmas shopping, all that sort of shit.

Dan: a big mess.

Sidey: But wouldn't you know it, they'd already told you earlier on in the movie that there was a plan to make the internet

Reegs: make

Dan: that

Reegs: have said it. Well, she had a eureka moment, didn't she? At

some

Dan: the internet work everywhere else. All they wanted to do was create a completely ground breaking new technology.

No, it's done. That was it.

Sidey: we need it to be for the plot. Yeah.

And

Reegs: Because the idea is any electrical device

Dan: so suddenly, well, you're back on the internet thanks to Xenotech.

Reegs: where's all the I know you

Sidey: of the cast standing around a desk As they wait for their phones to fit, I'm honestly, you're watching the screen for about, felt like 90 seconds of them all staring at their phone, and then eventually one beeps, and you're like,

Dan: ping, ah,

Sidey: fucking hell, that was

Reegs: Christ we can have our phones back at Christmas!

This is the

Dan: and TJ is in hospital there, Jennifer Aniston's there, and even the nurse says, Oh, thank God, I'm back on the line, thanks to Xenotech.

Reegs: So it's cautionary tale about how we're all addicted to the internet.

Sidey: Don't ever be online.

Basically, you're

Reegs: Basically.

Dan: you'll be in hospital.

Reegs: Just always make sure you're staring at your

Sidey: And then, yeah, I guess they're trying to do the family fucking shite thing of them making up at Christmas, something about stuff

Reegs: because somebody was somebody else's brother. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. But,

Dan: to be honest, for me there was, there was a lot more

Laughs in this. There was a few nice moments. There was around them doing office party stuff, you know, like,

Sidey: Well, there's loads of like photocopying of boobs and dicks. You see a guy's dick. You do see a guy's dick. If that's something that interests you. I was particular as a high point for me.

Reegs: Yeah, was it a good, nice one? Or

Cris: that's it. I'm watching it

Sidey: Kaylee and I watched a series as an aside on Netflix called the obliterate

Reegs: Obliterated, yep.

Sidey: and you get.

A lot of dick content with like urethral sounding, if that's

Reegs: sounding. You don't get urethral sounding

Sidey: fucking do, yeah, it's a torture device, ripped by urethral sounding. So, so not as good dick content as that, but better than

Reegs: There's

Sidey: yeah, So there's that, there's

People shagging, there's the DJ I think is having a foursome, I think, in a, in a cupboard.

Dan: and loving it.

Sidey: Yeah, he's having a great time. So there's all that kind of you know, usual Christmas party but but to to the nth degree.

Reegs: still thinking about the sounding, to be honest now,

Sidey: I think it's in episode five.

Dan: five. Okay, steer away. Should you steer away from this?

Sidey: Yes absolutely. When they finish filming

Reegs: though?

Dan: I thought this was okay. Yeah, I thought it was

Reegs: It's funny.

Dan: Yeah, there was enough laughs. For me, I like the cast, that goes a long way because they all, they're all good actors. There

Reegs: 'cause some of these do hit like game night. I dunno whether you've seen that, but that one's quite funny as

Sidey: that's Rachel McAdams.

Reegs: Yeah. And Bateman as well.

It's kind

Dan: I like him, Bateman, and I like this TJ, TJ Hooker, or whatever his

Sidey: Yeah, that's him, yeah. When they finished filming, they donated the furniture and props from the set to the local furniture bank which goes to homeless people or victims of domestic violence.

So that's something to like about this affair. Because I didn't really like it. No, it

Dan: it wasn't for

Sidey: I thought it was absolutely garbage. Like, everyone's in it. I quite like things that they've been in. But I was just thinking about those.

Dan: It's an hour and a half, it's one of those. You just, it's an easy to watch thing. I didn't mind it at all. I had a few silly toilet humour kind of wise cracks and things.

And

Sidey: Well, we're recording four episodes tonight. This isn't the worst thing that we've seen.

Dan: can see everything coming, you know, but you always can in these films. So, it

Reegs: I suppose setting up a gag to pay it off later, but that sounds a little

bit

Sidey: little bit different.

It looks like it's made money, I just

Cris: Oh, it looks like it's made money. I just looked at it now and it just looks like it's made quite

Dan: big time.

Sidey: made, like, big time.

Reegs: And that was all spent on the cocaine?

Dan: Is

Reegs: been a sequel then? Or, you'd think with those kind of numbers people would

Cris: I think one and done is, enough. What else are you going to do? Why move the party into space? I mean, it's still an office

Sidey: party.

Yeah, yeah.

Cris: only, the only thing on Christmas parties is I actually was in Romania. a few years ago for a Christmas party. And I the same, I got invited to one of my mates office Christmas parties.

I've never met anyone that works there. There's about 200 people there and they had it in their office and he got absolutely blitzed on all sorts. And he. took his underwear off and put it on, on the floor. You know, where you have those water dispensers, like the big ones, he put his underwear inside the bottle and then put it back

Sidey: it back on. And

Cris: And then the, the Monday morning people went to work and there were the underwear floating in half full tank of water.

Sidey: tank of So

I can

Cris: so that I can, I can tell you that's a real thing that I've seen live happening. So.

Dan: Clever. I mean office parties in the office.

Sidey: Yeah, That's a no, isn't it? We we always have month end drinks.

Dan: Mm hmm.

Sidey: And at my old work,

Dan: every day.

Reegs: At my old

Sidey: my old work, it was just Friday drinks. And that used to be wild back then.

Nowadays makes me sound really odd. But it's just that we just have a couple. I don't want to hang around work. I just don't want to be there. I've been there all day, all week. The last thing I want to do is

Reegs: I mean, I work from home, but I feel the same, to be honest.

Sidey: But the price of a pint in town now is like fucking astronomical, so you can understand why people would want to pre drink at work.

Anyway, this film is a turkey.

Cris: Strong recommend from me.

Reegs: Strong recommend

Dan: Yeah, I think it's your Christmas pudding.