Don't Believe the Hype

A Masterpiece!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I seriously thought that this was gonna be a great movie to watch but left me dissapointed instead.I don't know anymore if its the acting or storyline involved here, although I will admit that Frank Whaley's character as Jim really really sucked. The reason for that is, his character is like a woodpecker always nagging your shoulder and won't get away from you. He just would've been better off as playing as a really shy nerd instead of a headache one, it would've made my movie watching experience more easier to manage...Also unfortunately the gorgeous Jennifer Connelly was on this so she got a bad luck outta this too!Waste of time in my opinion on this movie!

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.

Josie (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of the town's wealthiest businessman, faces problems at home and wishes to leave home, but is disorientated. Her decision is finalized after she falls asleep in a Target dressing room, and awakes to find that she is locked in the store overnight with the janitor, Jim (Frank Whaley), the town "no hoper" and liar.For a film that is written and produced by John Hughes, this comes off as a bit of a disappointment and it is no surprise that this has been largely forgotten. Not even the star power of a young Jennifer Connelly can save this one.What went wrong? The soundtrack? The direction? The plot? This is hard to say. There is a lot of potential involved in two young people locked in a Target. Heck, Hughes did wonders with a few kids put in a detention hall (library). This one has its good moments and a lovable loser (not unlike Ferris Bueller), but just never takes off.

"Career Opportunities" has one of the most insufferably awful third acts that I have seen in a long, long while. The end of this picture, which is sort of a sly 80-minute Target commercial, concludes with two young people in love (Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly) trapped inside of a supermarket with two bungling burglars (Dermot Mulroney and Kiernan Mulroney). The burglars are the consummate villains for an idiotic comedy, and the whole plot of the third act, with the Mr. Whaley and Miss Connelly attempting to outsmart them using wits, deception, as well as sexual temptations is utterly dreadful. The last thirty minutes of this picture drags its feet so heavily—exhausted with its own plot mechanics—that it seems all too eager to end itself, and so it does. "Career Opportunities" suffocates itself with its climax, draining all of the inertia and charm that I uncovered in the first hour of the movie. Only a truly bad ending can do that.The initial two-thirds is well-assembled, even if it is mostly a bloated Target advertisement. I wonder who funded the picture. Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly give superb performances as two troubled young adults, the former a son of a ne'er-do-well family who cannot hold a job to save his life, the latter as a wealthy socialite's daughter who will stop at nothing to enrage her emotionally distanced parent. I enjoyed the setup with Mr. Whaley getting a last-ditch job as the night clean-up boy at Target (after misbelieving that he was getting a six-digit executive salary when the hiring manager mixes up the applications), being locked inside the supermarket, and messing around instead of doing his job. Miss Connelly, who fell asleep while shoplifting (once again trying to infuriate her father), finds him skating around in a tutu. With a girl as pretty as Miss Connelly hanging around, Mr. Whaley, of course, keeps shirking his responsibilities and the movie evolves into a sort of retrospective on the characters' pasts with what could have been and what just might be around the corner in their lives.Of course, that's all before the burglars arrive and the movie completely goes downhill. It is a real shame, because again, the first hour has a subtle charm. Mr. Whaley is excellent as the fast-talking, self-delusional hotshot who slowly realizes he's not all he makes himself out to be. He's sort of a ramped-up, modern Andy Hardy. Miss Connelly is also very good, although the screenplay frequently forces her to play the sexual teasing a little too far. At one point, she taunts the burglars upon a coin-operated horse ride, and the camera only shows her from the waist up as the ride thrusts her body up and down in a manner that is much too blatantly suggestive. They have some nice chemistry together. I just wish the filmmakers had had the wits to rewrite the third act and save "Career Opportunities" from plummeting into utter failure.Is it a complete failure with so much going for it in the beginning? From a fair standpoint, perhaps not. But judging from how limitlessly exhausted I became and how eager I was to see the movie end after those two robbers broke into the store, it just might be. I must give credit to the filmmakers—and the two stars—for what they did so stupendously well at the beginning, but cannot overlook the egregious errors that consume not just the end, but the whole resolution.