MBunge Well, this movie was a near complete waste of time.Employee of the Month tells the story of David (Matt Dillon), a man who loses his job at a bank and his fiancée in the same day and heads back to work with a gun stuffed in his pants. And it's a comedy. Along the way we meet David's Bachelor friend Jack (Steve Zahn), one of those crazy guys who rants about everything. We also stop by a strip club for some gratuitous nudity, watch Jack steal jewelry and money off of dead accident victims, meet David and Jack's gay friend who's lost his dental license (Dave Foley), find out David is cheating on his fiancée Sarah (Christina Applegate) with her best friend Wendy (Andrea Bendewald), meet an extremely accommodating hooker (Jenna Fischer), watch a completely inexplicable dream sequence about David foiling a bank robbery, learn why David is badly burned on the left side of his body and suffer through a massively out-of-left-field twist ending that just goes on and on and on and on.Employee of the Month is an example of one of the great banes of the modern viewer. Production values on films are so high, they all look and sound so good, you've actually got to pay attention to them to realize how bad they are. But the more you focus on them, the worse they are to sit through. If you just sort of half pay attention to this movie, it might not seem so terrible and you might actually be caught off guard by the big twist at the end. But the more closely you watch it, the worse it gets.Firstly, Matt Dillon is horrible in this film. There's only one single moment in the entire story where he makes David seem like a remotely real person, and it comes way at the end while you're already being assaulted by the awesome WTF quality of the twist.Secondly, the writing isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is. The story is all about making you think David is one sort of person, then literally telling you that he's just been pretending to be that person, then "shocking" you with the sort of person David actually is. But instead of making the character a puzzle the audience has to gradually figure out, the filmmakers just cheat. They simply throw new information about David into the story without building up to those revelations or connecting them to anything else. And the twist ending is one of those bad twists which doesn't make you look at everything you've seen in a different light. instead, it says "Hey! There was actually a bunch of stuff going on that you didn't see and it completely invalidates what you've just watched! Sure, it doesn't make any sense…but it's so clever!" There are a couple of good things in the film, namely the performances of Steve Zahn and Christina Applegate. Zahn gets to chew the scenery with gusto as Jack and Applegate manages to be the most believably human character in the entire story.Employee of the Month isn't just a bad film. It is one of those movies that when it's over, you will say out loud (even if no one else is around), "Why did I waste my time with this thing?" I had to stick it out to write this review. Trust me, you don't need to bother.

kushka53 This is a crummy film, a pretender to a genre of surprise ending movies. And a genre that has been done so much better before. The plot limps along, with a predictable ending. (Yawn) The characters are unlikeable, and some are so unlikeable they are almost unwatchable. Matt Dillon, a fine, intense actor is totally miscast here and is stiff and mannered. The others are forgettable. Much of the dialog is sophomoric, again a pretender trying to be witty. I wouldn't hire the screenwriter to write my grocery list. Yes, it's that bad, veering from misogynistic to just plain gross, as in beyond frat-house gross. With so much real talent out there, I'm really surprised this movie ever got made. It shows the total lack of imagination of the office suits...

merklekranz I watched it all the way through, even the credits which keep rolling plot twist clarifications. The entire film is like an unwrapped package that suddenly is supposedly tied together in the last 10 minutes. What precedes the hectic, quite unbelievable, conclusion, is sort of an offensive comedy-romance. Then, suddenly the movie transforms into a convoluted crime caper. This leaves the viewer feeling manipulated and quite confused. Rarely do you see a film spiral out of control so badly. If Matt Dillon had simply put a bullet in his head and the screen fade to dark, it would have provided a more satisfying ending. - MERK

iaretehwinnerguy One of my all time favorite movies ever. I've watched it 3 or 4 times this summer alone. The cast is perfect, and the mix of action, comedy, suspense, drama, etc. is amazing. Steve Zahn is brilliant. Everyone time he shows up in the movie, laughs happen. He is hilarious throughout the entire movie. His humor is completely off the wall, and he almost doesn't even fit into the movie at all, yet fits perfectly. Matt Dillon is so laid back and cool throughout most of the movie, and you almost forget that he doesn't really have a scar in the real life until half way through the movie. The rest of the cast do their jobs perfectly. The entire movie takes a turn equal to Fight Club in my eyes. Even my friend who figures out EVERY movie 30 minutes in, never saw that coming. Then it turns on you again, then you think you know whats going to happen next. Then it doesn't happen, and then it does. Every single performance is right on, the music is perfect, and the miscellaneous humor is spot on. I think the best part, is that almost everything about the movie is given to you up front, you just have absolutely no idea.