Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Mannequin vs. Career Opportunities

Here's something that has always bugged me. How does the movie Career Opportunities get made after the movie Mannequin? I mean essentially they are the same movie.

  • Geeky ne'er-do-well lands overnight job in a department store.
  • Said ne'er-do-well somehow gets incredibly hot woman to fall for him.
  • Hilarity ensues
What I want to know is how that pitch meeting went...
"Ok, I have an idea for a movie. It's like Mannequin, except the hot girl isn't a mannequin."
"I love it!"
Sure the box office figures won't back me up on this but I actually think that Career Opportunities was the better movie. Hear me out...
  1. Frank Whaley vs. Andrew McCarthy - Push. Both of them suck. Although Whaley did play a young "Moonlight" Graham in Field of Dreams so if I had to choose...
  2. Jennifer Connelly vs. Kim Cattrall - Connelly by a mile! She's gone on to win an Oscar for cry eye! And one can't help but think that we would have all been spared the Botox-injected train wreck that is Cattrall in her 50s (or is it 60s?) if Mannequin never happens. Hell, she didn't even play the Mannequin for half the movie! They could have made a wooden statue of Jennifer Connelly and killed two birds with one stone!
  3. Target vs. Prince & Co. - Advantage Target, though I probably would have went with Prince & Co. if I was in the market for a pipe organ or hang glider.
  4. Supporting Cast - I'll give this round to Mannequin. You just can't beat a flamboyantly gay James Spader and the guy that played Capt. Harris in the Police Academy movies. The Hollywood Montrose character was very memorable too. As for Career Opportunities, the cameo by John Candy was a nice surprise and I'm sure Dermot Mulroney is sure to list that film at the top of his resume too.
  5. Plot - It's pretty ridiculous to discuss plot since both of these movies were pretty awful. But frankly, I found it more believable that the chronic screw-up in Career Opportunities continued to be a screw-up when he took his job, compared to the dumbass in Mannequin that suddenly saw the err of his ways and straightened out. I say once a screw-up, always a screw-up!
Overall, its clear that Career Opportunities was the better movie.

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous Says:

    I must be slow today...I never heard of either of those movies before reading that entry.

    But did you know that Jennifer Connelly's first major role was in the movie "Labyrinth"? Yeah, that one, in which David Bowie plays, essentially, himself. :)

  2. Greg Says:

    I remember seeing that movie when I was about 8 and being creeped the hell out! Actually, for a movie with lots of freaky shit, I think I was most scared of David Bowie.

  3. Anonymous Says:

    You may want to give the supporting cast a push. Career Opportunities also had the "son-bitch" guy from The Distinguished Gentleman. Not ringing a bell? The "you're as useless as hen shit on a pump handle" guy from City Slickers. Still no? Well that's a shame because those are pretty memorable lines. Okay, he was friggin' Mr. Binford. That should do it.