Second Act

A worker at a big box store (Jennifer Lopez), bumping against the glass ceiling, reluctantly goes along when her best friend (Leah Remini) creates a false resume that lands her a corner-office job at a high-end cosmetics company, where the owner (Treat Williams) likes her but his hotshot daughter (Vanessa Hudgens) gets her back up from the start. Rather than freshen its formula, the movie simply switches midstream from one stale formula to another, with a reckless twist in Justin Zackham and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas’ script that would leave a less likeable cast high and dry, especially given Peter Segal’s humdrum direction. All three of them are lucky the cast is good enough—if not to pull it off, at least to make it go down painlessly. Charlyne Yi supplies fun as half-phobic, half-kinky office drone.