Office Race

Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton & Hank Azaria made "Run Fat Boy Run" (brilliant). This movie, Office Race took that plot, removed the brilliant parts, and added toilet humor and crude sex jokes that fall flat. I own Run Fat Boy Run and I rewatch it every few months, best modern underdog story ever. So Funny. The landlord, the gamblers, the shoplifter, the characters are so memorable. I won't ever bother watching Office Race again.

The plot and the script are the problem. The players did their best. I just watched it before writing this review and I'm deliberately trying to forget it. Run Fat Boy Run is so much better.

Pat (Beck Bennett) is a slacker salesman at an internet finance startup. His former underling Spencer (Joel McHale) gets promoted ahead of him. They need to make a sale to marathon-obsessed Rita (Erinn Hayes). Pat ends up training with Rita's group for an upcoming race with the sale on the line.

SNL alum Beck Bennett does a lot of voice work. As the comedic lead, he needs to be appealing even with the slackerism. In fact, his slackership needs to be fun and enjoyable to the audience. It's meh. That infects the whole movie. It's all very meh. Joel McHale is doing his irreverent most. Mostly, I'm not in love with this lead.

It feels like this movie is out of date in ways that I can't necessarily put my finger on.

As if it was written for actors we actually cared about, ones whose chemistry and comedic voice demanded our attention, and allowed our minds to roam free in hilarity whilst reminiscing how good the humour was, letting us roll through those awkward pauses, joke after joke.. just, laughing.

This movie has none of that.

The acting is wooden and stale. The awkward pauses between jokes seemingly go on for decades.

The editing feels as if it's trying to slow down the movie. This is a 40min episode of a mediocre show with barely recognizable c-list "celebrities".

Even if you just need background noise, choose something else.

Pat is a slacker, which is clear. He does the bare minimum at his job. But when his old boss leaves and makes his buddy Spencer the new boss, he takes it upon himself to make sure he is better than him. This all falls within charitable race that pat lied and said he pledged money too to not look like a bad guy. I thought there were some funny moments. An interesting group of characters that were acted well in this. Some moments of chaos and others that make you wonder. Office race I thought overall was pretty good and even the running was fun. It was also nice to see Kelsey grammar in something again.

Today felt like a comedy night with the wife we randomly choose and watched Bedazzled on one app and soon after we were working on a good solid 45mins of doom scrolling comedy movies on Paramount plus and we came across this one, first of all respects to the graphic designer who put that together, probably the best thing about the movie.

44 minutes in and we had to switch it off, it felt like a never ending sketch that just wouldnt quite hit the mark, it had some random bits that were the oppposite, it kinda wanted to be Wet Hot American Summer/Hot Rod/They Came Together but it just felt generic.

Disappointing too because the movie is packed with comedic actors.