Career Opportunities (1991)

To me, this movie is perfection.

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

A lot of fun.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

***SPOILERS*** The very sight of the drop dead gorgeous and ultra sexy 20 year old Jennefer Connelly, as spoiled little rich girl Josie McClellan, riding and rolling on a electronic pony was more then worth the price of admission then the duration of the entire movie. Josie gets herself locked up in the Target's ladies dressing room trying to shoplift a $20.00 pair of ladies underpants even though she had as much as $52,000.00 of cash on her to pay for it and ends up having the run of the place. That's until two crooks Nester & Gil, Demont & Kieran Mulroney who are obviously brothers, show up-after hiding and smoking pot in the store men's room- to rip the place off.The good for nothing $4.40 cent an hour night clean-up boy Jim Dodge, Frank Whaley, on his first day or night on the job ends up getting stuck-lucky guy-with Josie for the entire night that's a lot more then he ever bargained for. And in the end goes off with her to sunny California to start a new life as well as career opportunity in the up and coming multi-billion dollar industry of Silicon Valley. The fact that Josie comes from the richest family in the state of Georgia is nothing compared in what she got from hooking up with the cute clean-up boy Frank who showed her just what a good time, in running for her life and safety from the two Mulroney brothers as well as the local police, rally is.Jenniffer Connelly who just was seen in the movie "The Racketeer" who soon rocketed to the top as the hottest actress in Hollywood in this so-so movie about America's youth. As for actor Frank Whaley with the exception of playing accused but not proved JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in movies like "JFK" & "Fatal Deception Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald" he never had a part in a film as good or satisfying with a co-star as Connelly as the lowly Target night time clean-up boy Jim Dodge in "Career Opportunities".

John Hughes wrote but didn't direct this one, and it shows, Frank Whaley is a slacker and a chronic liar who spends his first night as a night janitor at Target and hooks up with runaway rich girl Jennifer Connelly.The second act is quite good and has some elements of The Breakfast Club - existential, one-location story about the interaction between very different people. The third act completely misses its mark when the plot is interrupted by two robbers, and it turns into a Home Alone clone and ends on a very unsatisfying note. Connelly is very very good though and Whaley is good too, similar to but more likable than Broderick's Ferris Bueller.

On the whole, "Career Opportunities" is disposable fluff; a half-assed John Hughes production from a guy whose heart clearly isn't in the work anymore. It's uncharacteristic of the man in that the characters are unrelatable, the hot-girl-falls-for-the-big-talking-loser storyline is contrived, and this thing just crawls ... and then ends abruptly. It's 80 minutes of jokes that just don't land, and it's no surprise that both Hughes and Jennifer Connelly have disowned the flick. But both leads put forth the effort. Frank Whaley strives with what he's got, and Connelly adds playful sexuality to her dialogue. Everyone in the supporting cast knows they're here for a paycheck, but the stars at least make a go of it. And John Candy shows up for a very pleasantly surprising cameo in the film's beginning. The problem there is that his scene finishes and we never see him again. Man, that guy is like a beam of sunshine in every movie he's in. He makes it look so easy.But let's not beat around the bush here. The real reason this movie made any money at the box office (and is still talked about today) is the 20 year-old Jennifer Connelly. This doe-eyed specimen is unbelievably sexy, and we can all be thankful to the Internet gods for the horse-riding .gifs floating around in cyberspace. Just like the frozen-in-time Target filming location, this movie is a celluloid preservation of her pre-anorexic youthful attractiveness. Her beauty is nothing short of sublime in an otherwise forgetful piece of early-'90s "meh". 4/10

I really love the ending to "Career Opportunities." A great, feel-good ending. When we're young, most of us don't realize how lucky we are just to be young and with possibilities of adventures ahead of us. But this ending shows the two characters very much realizing how lucky they are. The big band swing music just makes everything seem groovy, Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly pulling up in the limousine, stepping out to bask in their moment of triumph (to the amazement of the kids), Jennifer's GREAT bend at the knees/twirl and pulling him back in to the limo, the kid saying "He is so cool," as they drive off and finally - Frank and Jennifer's self-aware cool, sitting by a swimming pool in Hollywood. How does it get better than that? It doesn't. That's it. But IMDb requires me to write ten lines of text or they won't allow my review. What's that all about? What about those 7 years I spent in college learning the craft of journalism (well, yeah, I did party a lot), training my mind to condense my thoughts efficiently, to hone my words to the barest minimum for maximum effect? Were all those books I studied by Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson for naught? Now I'm being told to fluff the word count so that I can submit AN ONLINE REVIEW?! Well, I'm willing to do it for Career Opportunities. Many of the movies I see being made nowadays are downbeat, focusing on cruelty and the brutal nature of the modern world. It's so nice to take a trip back to the 80's when the message was "Anything's possible if you've got the balls to try and a silver tongue like Frank Whaley or Bill Murray." And one thing this movie has that Ferris didn't, is that Frank has to come to grips with his major flaw, and it's only when he does that, that he become a winner. Oh, and RIP John Hughes. You gave us some great, great movies, dude.