Get a Job (2016)

Will Davis (Miles Teller) and Jillian Stewart (Anna Kendrick) are a recent graduate couple with jobs lined up. It's an overconfident generation where every little accomplishment is greeted with rewards. Will's first paying job at LA Weekly is greeted with downsizing. He and his roommates are weed-smoking video-gamers. Luke (Brandon T. Jackson) starts at a trading firm. Ethan (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has a questionable internet idea. Charlie (Nicholas Braun) is a teacher. Will gets a motel night manager job and quickly gets fired. His dad (Bryan Cranston) also gets downsized and faces the new landscape. Tanya Sellers (Alison Brie) is an inappropriate manager and Katherine Dunn (Marcia Gay Harden) is the strict VP.There are so many good young actors and skilled veterans in the cast. None of the characters are worth rooting for. There are too many of them and with too many stories. There are lots of attempts at humor but few actual laughs. It has to be the fault of the writers and director. Even the basic premise of a generation of underachievers being rewarded is questionable. Neither Will nor Jillian is presented as slackers. Ethan is delusional and only Charlie truly fits the premise. In fact, Charlie brings the premise to its conclusion. This is so scattered that nothing sticks. If these actors weren't so good, this would really suck.

This film may have been marketed as a "hilarious" comedy, but that's not what it is. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it needed a little help to get viewed, or, in an ironic way, to get the "job" of people wanting to see it. The great cast alone should do that (and the performances are all very good), but let's face it, there's a lot of competition for eyeballs, most of which expect to see a constant stream of outrageous situations in "R" rated big screen comedies. This is not the first film whose ad copy oversells the funny (e.g., "The Bucket List.") "Get a Job" is not over-the-top trendy-edgy like "The Hangover" or "Bridesmaids," but even though it zips back and forth between several story lines, everything feels fairly authentic and relatable, considering. That's a sign of a well-made film, which this is.

In the reality of the finished product it is DOA! If you care to read how truly bad this flick is just scan through the other reviews here. The word FLOP is being kind to this movie. I watched it for Anna Kendrick and to see if Miles Teller could save himself from that gawd awful drummer boy movie. He falls another notch here.But I got a message from this story. Here is the millennials facing a global job market for which they are ill prepared due to the pressures of getting a college education and discovering a job market already over flowing with applicants. And then actually getting a job is no guarantee a career will follow. The 21st Century simply does not offer the opportunities the boomer generation took for granite.Why the writers and director pushed this story into the 'comedy' realm, I don't know. The message could really have been worthy of notice had the story taken a more serious path. But as it is we have a goof-ball flick of lackluster acting and goofy aimless editing. And somewhere a message is thrown in as with the basketball coach telling his class that awards are vacuous and worthless if you didn't actually earn it.

Miles Teller is once again playing the same character he always plays; I'm starting to question whether his role in Whiplash was a one time thing. He was fine in this role, I think he's mastered this character, but his character in this film was uninteresting. The cast (Bryan Cranston, Ana Kendrick, Alison Brie, etc.) is surprisingly very talented, but it seems that they were wasted in this movie because their characters are indistinguishable from one another. The movie is about people losing their jobs and eventually getting a job, and yet does not succeed in demonstrating why they deserve their job or would realistically even get that job. For example, Miles Teller's character gets his dream job by making a "viral video" (I doubt the movie knows what viral means, because he only get 100 000 views on only one video) and gets a straight pass to job offers and a start at his own company. I don't think that that's how life works, but apparently this movie thinks so. Other than the plot, it's supposed to be a comedy, and it's not actually funny - I mean it's not unfunny but when there is jokes, they kind of fall flat (like its characters).