Career Opportunities

Writer-producer John Hughes' followup to Home Alone lacks the spit-polish and magic of the blockbuster but still has plenty of absorbing characters, smart, snappy dialog and delightful stretches of comic foolery. Read full review

Mr. Whaley has to work too hard to be antic in the early, Ferris Bueller-type scenes, but he gets much better in more easygoing moments. The gorgeous Ms. Connelly is more model than actress, but by those standards she is relatively lively. Read full review

I'll admit most of the movie is great. The plot is strong, and it's funny too. But then the ending cancels out everything you just saw. What a tease. There's nothing behind a good front. [5 Apr 1991, p.J]

Like Home Alone, Career Opportunities is inoffensive, breezy and contains a funny cameo appearance by John Candy. The new film starts out well but falls apart midway because the serviceable situations that Hughes and director Bryan Gordon set up don't much go anywhere. Read full review

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES is an entertaining film with interesting characters the viewer can actually care about. Read full review

There are worse people to be locked inside a movie with than these two, but they’re not given anything to do . You don’t want to hear about how they can’t relate to their fathers; you don’t want to hear about their fantasies of ditching the Midwest and jetting to L.A. Read full review

Whaley has some ingenuous charm, and Connelly may have some skills, too. The script gives neither much opportunity. [2 Apr 1991, p.4D]

This premise is not a complete loss, and the movie is not badly written. But all of its various elements (Whaley and Connelly's friendship, their battles with the two criminals who come to rob the store, Whaley's quest to make something of himself, etc.) end up being thrown together like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This makes the movie messy and uninteresting. [5 Apr 1991, p.J]

In a sense, John Hughes doesn’t produce movies anymore. He produces entertainment machines, and Career Opportunities has been shamelessly patched together — like Frankenstein’s monster — from bits and pieces of Home Alone and The Breakfast Club. Read full review

Jennifer Connelly is very easy to look at. Career Opportunities isn't. Go see the standee. Read full review

Career Opportunities is a real strange one, a tasteless and completely off-key comedy that has the elements of the much-more serious and more interesting picture it could have been -- if only the film makers had a clue as to what sort of movie they were making. [30 March 1991, p.C3]

It manages to combine the least appealing qualities of several previous Hughes productions - the obnoxiousness of the central character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the tedium of the teen-age confessionals in "The Breakfast Club," the gimmicky plotting of "Home Alone." And it has nothing fresh to add in terms of casting, storyline or the kinds of comic insights about suburban life that sustain Hughes' best scripts. [30 March 1991, p.C5]

And as nice as it is to see dishy Jennifer Connelly roller-skate down the store's aisles, the scene is just one more instance of obvious padding to push the running time to (just) past 80 minutes. [2 Apr 1991, p.6D]

It's so much like Home Alone, it's the unofficial sequel, Home Alone II: Out on His Own. Career Opportunities shows us what happens when the Macaulay Culkin character grows up. It's not a pretty sight. [1 Apr 1991]