Rather than seize the chance to turn a satirical eye upon its CostCo-reminiscent setting, Employee of the Month seems perfectly content to rehash the same "battle of the male egos" story we’ve seen dozens of times before. This comedy does absolutely nothing creative with its workplace premise and results in a bland, laughless mess that feels about as assembly-line fresh and manufactured as the stuff actually sold in superstores like the one depicted here. 

Rapidly-rising stand-up comic star Dane Cook headlines Employee of the Month as Zack, a dude who’s never even come close to claiming the titular award in his life. When he’s not sharing a house with his grandma, Zack works as a lowly boxboy at Super Club, one of those superstores where you can buy pretty much anything in bulk (including coffins and shotguns, from what this movie shows). Zach's days are spent pretty much cruising around the store on his skates, hanging out with his fellow low-level employees, and being insulted on a consistent basis by Vince (Dax Shepard), Super Club’s number-one cashier and seventeen-time "employee of the month" winner.

However, when fetching cashier Amy (Jessica Simpson) joins the Super Club staff, bringing with her a rumor that she’s romantically-inclined toward employee-of-the-month winners, Zack’s competitive instincts kick into overdrive. From arriving extra-early to being more helpful with the customers, Zack does whatever he can not only to win the heart of the girl he’s fallen in love with but also to claim victory over the arrogant Vince -- who’s not willing to give up chances at a record eighteenth award without a fight.

Employee of the Month continues a long-lasting tradition of taking up-and-coming comedians and slapping them in a project that's meant to catapult them to cinematic stardom but ends up inhibiting their talents instead. Think Chris Rock in Down to Earth or Eddie Izzard in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and you'll know what Dane Cook faces in this overblown sitcom. I've always admired Cook's stand-up more than his movie work (which consists mostly of bit parts and as one of the ten most annoying characters in cinema history, Dennis Rodman's sidekick in Simon Sez). Cook may seem comfy enough here in his first leading role, but the movie's script appears thrown together, then plopped down into moviegoers' collective laps after having taken a big long scoop in the ice cream bucket of movie cliches. Any comic who wanted his big break in films could've read Cook's role line-for-line, and it would have turned out exactly the same.

You'd think that a comedy making such a big deal out of an award like "employee of the month" would take  a few satirical jabs once in a while. Unfortunately, aside from a couple of sight gags parodying the "buy in bulk" setting (including what's possibly the biggest bag of chips ever made), Employee of the Month lacks anything resembling satire. 

The movie's main priority is to put on a goofy show for viewers, but it still remains blissfully unaware of the lame premise we're being served. It also doesn't help that most of the jokes involve irritating and nonstop slapstick pratfalls; if you thought Dane Cook getting hit in the groin or bonked in the head wasn't that funny the first time it happened, prepare to see it a dozen or more times.

As for the actors, Cook remains relatively unscathed, but Dax Shepard is an over-the-top jerk of Snidely Whiplashian proportions, and Jessica Simpson -- well, what's been said about her in The Dukes of Hazzard applies here. In short, she's a pretty face, but she still needs to take an acting class or twelve.

Employee of the Month is the sort of movie that's bad not because it tries and fails miserably -- it's bad because it doesn't even try at all. In an age when infinitely more pleasing and original films like Little Miss Sunshine and The Illusionist must claw their way to the attention of audiences, it's kind of sad to see something as harmless but paper-thin and predictable like Employee of the Month get a much bigger head start than it really deserves.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Lions Gate Films and rated "PG-13" for crude and sexual humor, and language.)