THE OFFICE GAMES (2022)

THE OFFICE GAMES (2022)

Tagline: Time To Level Up.

(Comedy, Romance, Gaming) [R]

In this one, Jimmy is a video game master who leads fellow gamers Tina and Hunglikekong in gaming campaigns with legendary precision, but he is kind of a slacker in real life living in his mom's basement. His parents decide to take matters into their own hands and force Jimmy to get a job. After failing to blow the interview he lands the job and is immediately assigned a website project with Tina who just happens to be a crush of his. It does not take long before the duo becomes a force getting the attention of a rival company several floors up in the same building. Let the OFFICE GAMES begin.  

Right now you can find this streaming on multiple platforms and it’s actually genuinely pretty freakin good. One thing that is pretty annoying though is the actual name of the movie. Not because it sucks, but because when you look up “office games” or “the office games” the results are loaded with stuff that isn’t this movie. One thing that caught my attention with this thing is that I actually thought it was going to be a bit more SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD than it was, but there are a lot of elements in here that give this its own feel and sincere charm. 

One thing that really helps out is the cast. I mention in a lot of my reviews the actors and actresses I think you need to hire when you are making a movie and one of them is Jodelle Ferland. She is best known for the TV series “Dark Matter”, but I first started following her career back when TALL MAN came out. She does mostly TV work, but if you are casting a movie and you need someone that can crush it on a level that Danielle Harris might. Come to think of it, Jodelle looks a lot like Danielle did in the late 90s.

Needless to say, she is epic as Tina in this and she has awesome chemistry with Even Marsh (SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS) who plays Jimmy. Tina comes across as down to earth and not a snob which really makes her character relatable in this thing. Marsh takes on a confident, but kind of geeky persona in this role as Jimmy, and he comes across as the kind of guy you not only want to root for but that you want as your friend even if he didn’t rock at video games. Mark Camacho (X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST) crushes his role as Bruce who is the big boss so to speak of Tina and Jimmy in the movie. He gets asked to show the most range and does a fantastic job. Christian de la Cortina plays the leader of a rival company named Mark and also is very good in this. It doesn’t feel like he is overplaying the part and in this thing, I think that works to the film's advantage. Darla Biccum (VAMPIRE DOG) takes on the role of Cindy who is kind of the company horn dog, but I liked that they didn’t have her just hitting on Jimmy the entire movie. They managed to make her a weird by likable character because at least she’s genuine about the team. Eliot Ahdoot also does a great job as Eyal who is a janitor type that has a lot of untapped fighting skills. 

There are a few things in this movie that might piss some people off. I am not sure how the part where we find out one of the gamers didn’t get up to go to the bathroom for 13 hours and wore a diaper to deal with it, goes over with gamers, but yeah… that’s in this thing. I will say that I worked at a security company once with a dude that was addicted to “World Of Warcraft” and he said that he positioned his monitor in such a way that he could go to the bathroom, leave the door open and keep playing. He also said he had a super long cord on his joystick so he could roam around a bit if he needed to. Anyway – gamers man, it’s a different breed. 

What you don’t want to expect going into this movie is SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD as I mentioned earlier. There are some video game-type graphics throughout, but none of it is overkill and no one can do a flying jump kick with an imaginary sword or anything like that. So in that sense, the posters are slightly misleading. None of that makes this thing any less fun. 

I give this one a solid 5 out of 7. It’s a really fun movie that utilizes clichés on an expert level, gives us characters to root for, and offers up a fantastic cast.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF RAGING ROOSTER FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.