Jessica Simpson, Dane Cook, Dax Shepard and colleagues will not be in the running for Hollywood's employee of the month for their new comedy.
   In fact, except for stand-up comic Cook, who comes off as likable enough in the dreadful workplace tale Employee of the Month, everyone else involved belongs in the unemployment line.
   In a perfect world, this miserably idiotic movie would put an end to Simpson's alleged acting career. Simpson's so flat and vacuous, it's an insult to all the equally untalented yet unknown pretty faces looking for a break in Hollywood that she got the role over them.
   But she's a pop star whose celebrity makes movie marketers' chores that much easier. So audiences may be stuck with her until studios and filmmakers decide to stop hiring her because she has no presence on screen.
   First-time director Greg Coolidge shares screenwriting credit with Don Calame and Chris Conroy, and it's a sorry day on the job when it takes three people to come up with such a lame comedy.
   The movie is set at a Costcolike SuperClub warehouse bargain store. Vince (Shepard), a malicious little toad, has risen through the ranks to become head cashier and employee of the month 17 straight times. He now aims for a record No. 18.
   Slacker Zack (Cook) is Vince's opposite, lazy and easygoing, a guy who has worked at Super-Club for 10 years and never risen above lowly box-boy status. Yet unlike reviled Vince, Zack is beloved among his co-workers.
   When gorgeous cashier Amy (Simpson) transfers in from another store, the rumor goes around that she only dates employees of the month. Vince and Zack both are smitten, the two going head-to-head to win that month's title and, hopefully, Amy's heart.
   What follows is a succession of empty-headed jokes and pranks, with a lot of repetitive pratfalls.
   Cook rises above execrable material to make Zack somewhat sympathetic. Everyone else is a cardboard caricature, including Efren Ramirez (Pedro of Napoleon Dynamite) as Vince's sidekick.
   Simpson utters her dialogue with all the personality of a 10-pound can of cling peaches.
   "You employees of the month are all the same," Amy grouses at one point, a line that's just deadly dull in Simpson's lifeless delivery.

Employee of the Month
   DCast :
Dane Cook, Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Efren Ramirez, Harland Williams

Director:
Greg Coolidge

Rating: PG-13
for crude and sexual humor, language

Running time:
97 minutes

This story was published Friday, October 06, 2006