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Employee of the Month
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Sam Scott (6th March 2007). |
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The Film
 Like most celebrities, Jessica Simpson is a complete media whore. With a successful career as a pop singer with a large fanbase of 13 year old girls for her music and 18+ year old males for other reasons, Simpson has managed to push herself into different bits of the pie and had a popular reality television show that followed her and (ex) husband Nick Lachey around following their day to day lives. In 2005 she somehow managed to get the part of Daisy Duke in the feature film version of "The Dukes Of Hazzard", which became one of the most critically hated but financially successful films of the year. After 'proving' herself as an actress like so many other solo female 'artists' before her, she was then given a role in "Employee Of The Month". "Employee Of The Month" is a romantic comedy in which Simpson starts work at a local supermarket called Super Club. This causes Zack Bradley (the extremely overrated comedian Dane Cook) to actually do some work as Simpson declares she will date whoever is the next "Employee Of The Month". One problem for Zack though, is that he must beat colleague Vince (Dax Shepard - "Without A Paddle") who has won the title for the last seventeen months. As I'm sure you can imagine, much hilarity ensues as the pair battle it out to become "Employee Of The Month". As I'm sure you have guessed from the tone of my first two paragaphs, I was not a big fan of this film. It's formulaic, romantic fluff that has forgotten to add the comedy element through inept sequences of poorly made pointless scenes. The acting is second rate which, let's be honest, is what you would expect from a cast made up of a mediocre (yet gorgeous) pop singer, an overrated comedian who's Tourgasm show was boring and downright rubbish and a man whose biggest film to date has been "Without A Paddle". Unfortunately I find it hard to recommend this film to anyone other than big fans of the cast, but at the same time I'm not saying the film is awful. It is just below average.
Video
Lionsgate have given us a 1080p transfer using AVC MPEG-4 compression set at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. To be honest, whilst it has no noticeable damage it seems to lack the glow and colour seperation that you would expect. Whilst a good transfer, it is probably the worst I have seen in high definition to date. As a bonus though, all the extras are 1080p.
Audio
Lionsgate have offered up two different soundtracks for the film: English DTS-HD High Resolution 5.1 ES and English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX. For the review I went with the DTS track and like the picture it was a little disappointing. Although it isn't an action film, the surrounds and LFE were well underused giving the film a lack of oomph which it so dearly needed. Not even the score uses the surrounds to anywhere near it's capability.
Extras
We start off the extras with an audio commentary with director Greg Coolidge and as far as solo efforts ago, this was pretty average. Whilst he is good to listen to and offers up a mix of information about the film, he has a monotonous voice and he becomes very tiresome after about an hour. We then get a scene specific commentary with Coolidge and Cook which fares a little better, yet is completely different and more 'jokey'. They should have done the full length commentary with Collidge doing the solo effort for a scene specific section. Next up we have bloopers which is five minutes of the cast messing up lines and trying to hard to be unfunny, failing on all counts. Then there is a section called Ad Libs which is basically some extended clips and hould've gone into the bloopers extra to save time flicking through a menu screen. After that is a featurette entitled "On Set Shenanigans" which again, could've been chucked onto the blooper reel, especially seen as it's just as funny. We continue the poor standard of the extras with another featurette, this time called "At Work With Dick" which is basically one of the cast members making a fool out of himself even more, probably not realising what film he is working on. Then we have The Men Of Super Club which involves many of the main male characters as they try and be funny by discussing retail whilst in character. Like everything else on the disc, it falls flat on it's face. The Beauty Of Bulk is pretty much a continuation, though this time the cast are being interviewed in character. We end the extras with some instantly forgettable deleted scenes, most of which are actually just extended bits and pieces. This section should have a longer running time, involving half the film.
Overall
Below average film, on a not so great disc.
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