Career Opportunites (1991)

John Hughes wrote, but did not direct (and in fact expressed some disappointment with the finished product) what feels like a lesser cousin to Ferris Bueller. Frank Whaley plays Jim Dodge, a 21 year old big talker from the Illinois suburbs who is still living at home and going nowhere in life. Fired from a string of jobs Jim eventually takes a position as the "night cleanup boy" at local Target store. On his first day Jim ends up locked in the store overnight with his high school crush Josie McClellan (Jennifer Connelly) a typically Hughesian story of adolescent wish fulfillment. Also rather Hughesian are the two bumbling robbers who end up breaking into the store. A "good enough" movie Career Opportunities is understandably not numbered among Hughes better films. Much of the movie was filmed at night inside a Georgia Target store which is fun to look at, remember cassette tape racks? There were only around 400 Target stores when this movie was shot in 1990, today there are over 1,800. While that chain has faired far better then similar ones like Shopko and Kmart, which were more successful then Target at the time this film was made, Career Opportunities is not one of the reasons for this. In fact the store this movie was filmed in actually shut down a few years ago and is now owned by a protestant mega church. **1/2