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| Career Opportunities
Year: 1991
Classification: Comedy
Actors/Actresses:
- Dermot Mulroney
- Frank Whaley
- Jennifer Connelly
The amazon.com reviewer needs to get his facts straight!
This is a great movie...I think I have a review here or the VHS version...anyhow, I wanted to point out, the movie is not really about Whaley's character lusting after Jennifer. It's more focused on the comedy of it all. Also..Dermot Mulroney does NOT play Connely's boyfriend, he plays the robber/murderer who breaks into Target to rob the place, and runs into Whaley and Connely! You can't write a bad review basically trashing the movie, if you clearly haven't even seen it!
It's Got Jennifer Connelly
This movie is all right, I suppose. Jennifer Connelly is in it, long before her Academy Award for "A Beautiful Mind," when she started looking like Lara Flynn Boyle thrown under a steamroller. The story is fairly lightweight, a bit of thinly comic fluff about Jennifer Connelly and some other guy whose name doesn't matter getting stuck in a Target store after hours. Unfortunately, just as the story really gets going, with Jennifer Connelly roller-skating around in tight pants and a dangerously overstressed T-shirt, an unwelcome plot twist intrudes in the form of two burglars, who are neither absurd enough to be funny nor threatening enough to be dramatic. At any rate, Jennifer Connelly is in it.
One highlight of the movie is a scene where Jennifer Connelly, without roller skates but still in the T-shirt, goes for a ride on one of those drug store mechanical ponies. Sadly, even in the DVD version of this film, this important scene was cut far too short in favor of the less compelling themes of the script. Still -- Jennifer Connelly. In a T-shirt. Riding a mechanical pony in her T-shirt. Jennifer Connelly is doing this.
So, even though it's not exactly Schindler's List, I give this film 4 stars -- 2 each -- for Jennifer Connelly.
Did I mention Jennifer Connelly?
Jennifer Connelly. Thank you.
I like it for what it could have been.....
I absolutely love this film- it's strangely endearing. and the best part is, it is most endearing for what it COULD have been. i think that's why i like watching it so much. the film was made during john hughes' fall from grace (his deal with the devil had to run out sometime) and the early 90's weren't as kind or interested in his fantastic dissections of 80's class conflicts and teenagers know best philosophy. career ops does run a tad thin but there was a great deal of potential. i think whaley's performance was really underrated. if the film had kept some of the scenes shown in the teaser trailer in 1991, he would have been even more likable. the problem is, hughes wants whaley to be a cross between Duckie in 'pretty in pink', ferris bueller and even the anthony michael hall char. in 'weird science'. this amalgamation doesn't do Whaley justice in what was probably a sincere attempt to create an original character of his own. His Jim Dodge is actually really interesting- a cool guy that doesn't trust his own coolness, a lower middle class son who doesn't know how to do well in his parent's eyes and an imaginative, articulate guy who can't quite escape midwest america. if the film would have been less about slapstick (please please please shoot whoever decided bringing in the mulroney brothers for their unecessary subplot that just ruins the film) and more about the dynamic between whaley and connelly, it could have been fantastic. connelly, meanwhile, is also let down by someone- the editor. she is fantastic- beautiful, articulate, classy, and graceful, but appears to be acting in a totally different movie than whaley. the scenes both about and with her father border on the uneasy. i have a feeling that in the original script she was really abused by the bullying dad, perhaps both physically and sexually. i could see it as a possibility with that character. we get a hint of this but then the movie shies away from it completely and we never quite get if its a joke or not (although the scene of connelly in profile with the father outside her door always made me nervous.) i really do like she and whaley together but both hughes and the editors don't seem to know what kind of movie they wanted to make- a slapdash comedy in a newly popular chain store, or a character study of a 'much cooler than his town gives him credit for' guy and the genuinely kind and rich girl who befriends him under strange circumstances. for this matter, we also (b/c of the editing) are never quite sure where connelly's afections lie- in liking jim dodge, or in getting the hell out of town. i just have a soft spot for this film and what it could have been if everyone involved in the production had agreed on what they wanted to make. the ending is atrocious and corny but the rest has promise. this is a great film for aspring filmakers and especially WRITERS to watch both for its good points but mostly for its wrong turns. A great deal can be learned from it.
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