The Five Worst Christmas Parties In The Movies

If you're currently employed and haven't already attended your annual office Christmas party then you're probably dreading the imminent annual display of drunkenness and awkward groping that offers even the most unassuming of us the chance for instant workplace notoriety. The only consolation we can offer those about to be caught feeling up the senior partner's trophy wife in a conference room is that you still fared better than these folks:

5. L.A. Confidential (1997) While it's a good idea -- even in 2008 -- not to be a Hispanic man arrested for assaulting a police officer, it's even more important not to be arrested for the same while the entire detective squad is getting 'faced at their holiday booze-up.





4. Die Hard (1988) Arguably the greatest Christmas movie of all time, and not just because of Alan Rickman's performance as a late-era capitalist Scrooge (or Bonnie Bedelia's cleavage). But because when you come right down to it, saving your wife from Eurotrash gunmen says "I love you" much better than some stupid ring from Jared:




3. Camp (2002) I was unaware of either the original version of this office party musical number (from the 1968 Broadway musical Promises, Promises) or this tribute from the 2002 Fame-meets-Meatballs movie Camp until it was brought to my attention by a Hair Balls editor who shall remain nameless. I guess this is what passed for entertainment when people still had attention spans and plentiful supplies of brown acid.




2. That Enzyte Commercial Heh heh..."pole." Huh huh..."chubby." Ho ho..."Bob has a huge penis" (seriously, watch her mouth at 0:23). Sure, it's fashionable (and gratifying) to criticize the Enzyte people for their prurient late-night ad campaign. At the same time, you have to admire the cojones of a company brazen enough to repeatedly claim a bullshit "herbal supplement" will make women line up to impale themselves on your lap.




1. Trading Places (1983) The tragic aspect of the Duke & Duke Christmas party isn't that Winthorpe has sunk so far as to plant drugs in Billy Ray's desk, it's that he put a whole generation of Americans off eating salmon forever. To this day I can't see it on a buffet without having nightmarish visions of filthy Santa whiskers working their way through my digestive tract as I shakily move on to the canapes.




-- Pete Vonder Haar