Head Office
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Movie Reviews of Head Office
Movie Review: Snoozer with a few high points
Summary: 3 Stars
Many of the so-called stars of the film (Danny DeVito, for example) are cameo characters (in Rick Moranis's case that's a good thing). The writing is lame and aimless for the first good half hour. * SPOILERS * It suddenly picks up when they smoke a joint on the way to the small town factory they're closing down and Jack, fresh out of school, gives them the truth as to why they'e closing down the factory - it's in the company's best interest. Instead of giving the expected PR bull, he basically tells the truth and suddenly much to everyone's surprise, the press is giving him rave reviews and he gets promoted. After that the movie settles back into the boring rhythm and bland writing of the first part of the movie and again it's about as good as taking sleeping medicine until there's a big meeting with central american arms buyers who are supporting the dictators back home, at which point Jack steals the money, escapes and then donates it to the communists - the head of Jack's company tumbles.
The plot synopsis above is actually a lot more interesting than the movie. I turned this off the first time I watched it after about 20 minutes. When I saw all these glowing reviews I thought I'd better try again. And while it does pick up about midway, it more or less settles back into the same low energy writing of the first half and ends Hollywood style. Not a must-see by any means contrary to what reviews here would indicate. Fortunately it's only 87 minutes. Some of those minutes are longer than others.
Movie Review: Office Mania
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw this movie years ago and remembered that Rick Moranis' role was particularly funny. I watched the movie again mainly to see him. I wasn't disappointed.Movie Review: Nice concept, great cast, extremely weak writing
Summary: 2 Stars
I had reasonably high hopes for this movie, given the subject matter and cast (as well as some of the glowing reviews here, with which I must strongly disagree). The main problem with this movie is that this is VERY poorly written. The writer seems to know very little about business or much of anything else; it seems that this is someone who's entire outlook on life is derived from the insular Hollywood view. Not only are the cliched Hollywood liberal assertions way off the mark, but the plot development has some major gaps. What does the initial laboratory sex scene have to do with anything? What role does Jane Seymour actually play, other than showing up in lingerie? What was that violent racquetball game all about? There's a big protest over a plant due to be shut down, but what does the plant actually produce? How does Judge Reinhold's "love interest" happen to find him (why was she there?) and how does she know where to take him? Why does Reinhold keep the money rather than handing it back to the company or Latin Americans? And what happens to that little guy (Rabinowitz) after he gets fired? Naturally the writer dishes out the usual Hollywood liberal biases against business, Christians, pro-lifers, the military, WASPs, Germans, etc. but there are such huge holes in the story that it's the weakness of the writing that becomes laughable rather than the intended targets of "fun".
There are a few mildly funny moments, but none are what I'd call "hilarious". And too many dark moments, such as various business characters jumping out windows, hanging themselves, etc. Not what I'd expected or hoped for, and as I said, the writer has no real insight into business; probably never worked anywhere other than in Hollywood. And as far as the cast, they do a nice job, but a lot of the "headliners" have very minor roles. Danny DeVito, Rick Moranis, Jane Seymour, Don King, and Brian Doyle-Murray all have essentially "cameo" roles, very little on screen air time. The great Don Novello (aka Guido Sarducci) is essentially wasted in a minor role as a limo driver. Judge Reinhold is reasonably good, Eddie Albert is quite good, Richard Masur is passable as is Lori-Nan Engler; those are the people actually getting the airtime in this movie, NOT DeVito, Moranis, and Seymour (who were actually 3 of the 4 listed on the front of the DVD along with Reinhold). There's a reason it took until this year to release this 20 year old movie on DVD, it's just not very good. It's as if the writer had a decent rough idea for the movie, but couldn't work out the details. Plus the "stars" listed are often barely in this movie. But I've seen worse films, so this gets 2 stars.