Themes: Fired or Laid-Off, Bank Robbery, Nothing Goes Right
Main Cast: Matt Dillon, Steve Zahn, Christina Applegate, Peter Jason, Andrea Bendewald
Release Year: 2003
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
Plot
The directorial debut of actor/writer Mitch Rouse (Comedy Central's Strangers With Candy), Employee of the Month stars Matt Dillon as David Wells, a hapless guy whose day seems to be getting more and more out of control. After getting his life straightened out with a job he loves at a bank and beautiful fiancée (Christina Applegate), David is convinced he's got it made. Unfortunately, things take a distinct turn for the worse when he is dumped and fired all in the same day. Enter David's best friend, Jack (Steve Zahn), an oddball who makes his living stealing from corpses. Jack is determined to help cheer up David, but when a bank robbery and a large sum of cash enter the picture, it begins to become apparent that the disastrous and madcap events have only just begun. Employee of the Month premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Review
If there's anything to be taken from this jumbled straight-to-DVD release, it's that writer-director Mitch Rouse just loves that flashy slow-fast-slow editing trick, where an ordinary action revs up to triple speed for a few frames, then returns to normal. Rouse uses that trick a good dozen times in Employee of the Month. It has no narrative value, there only to catch your eye. But it does have metaphorical value for Rouse's film, which zips through the important sections, but lingers interminably on dull character development and red herring subplots. Employee of the Month also takes a flavor-of-the-minute approach to its genre, flopping around between black comedy, character drama and heist movie, none of it very convincing. What's more, the title has almost nothing to do with the events of the movie, making the confusion complete. Rouse's cast is the best thing going for Employee of the Month, as Matt Dillon, Steve Zahn and Christina Applegate all try reasonably hard to make the movie work, with Dillon even playing a burn victim -- extra points for seriousness. This is no doubt an attempt to give his character depth, but otherwise, has nothing meaningful to do with the film's themes or anything that happens. A more relevant trait is the fact that Zahn's character perpetrates scams involving the dead or dying -- stealing jewelry from corpses at accident scenes (while disguised as a coroner) and running action on which terminal patient is likely to die first. But it's only relevant because it gets at the mean spirit of this toxic little movie, which thinks Zahn's character is just kind of quirky-funny. Actually, he's the lowest form of bottom feeder. ~ All Movie Guide
