2.14.2010

70. Career Opportunities
71. WWE: Vengeance 2007

Since my mother's health issues have been getting worse, I've been slowing down considerably here. I haven't watched any dvds for 3 of the last 4 days. I just haven't been all that fired up about doing much of anything honestly. I've been working and sleeping. Beating myself up about all of the bad things I ever did to my mom has checked in at a very close number 3. All of that is another story for another time and another place however. Onto the reviews...

1991's Career Opportunities is one of those little movies I used to catch on cable all the time. It is the story of Jim Dodge. He's the town liar...the kid who always has some sort of grand tale that he passes off to the townsfolk. He's a spy. He works for the CIA. Dinner dates with the princess of Austria. Truth be told, he's a 21 year old guy who lives at home with his parents and can't keep a job. Josie McClellan is the town beauty queen. Her daddy's rich and she can have anyone and anything she wants. Things aren't always quite how they seem as Jim gets to know Josie on his first night at a brand new job.

Jim is played by Frank Whaley. I've always liked him and it's probably because of this flick. In what should be a pretty simplistic role, he gives Jim a lot of layers and depth. Same with Jennifer Connelly's Josie. Both give their characters more depth than you would expect from a movie like this. It doesn't hurt much that Connelly is absolutely gorgeous here. My 14 year old self had a huge crush on her after seeing this. The story here is pretty good. My only complaint with it is the subplot with the robbers. It feels almost as if it was added just to create some conflict for the leads and to pad the running time a bit. This one was actually written by the late John Hughes. It came right at the end of his days in the Hollywood spotlight. Shortly after this and his other 1991 flick, Curly Sue, he opted to back out of the limelight. He stuck to writing screenplays and did so mainly under a stage name.

Career Opportunities is a pretty good comedy. It's worth checking out.


WWE: Vengeance 2007 was my pick to close out the evening. This was the 7th annual Vengeance event produced by the WWE and would be the last. Following this event, they changed the name to Night of Champions.

This show saw all 9 WWE titles up for grabs. Personal highlights were CM Punk taking on Johnny Nitro for the then-vacant ECW World title. The main event was a 5 man Championship Challenge match featuring John Cena, Randy Orton, Bobby Lashley, King Booker and Mick Foley. It was an entertaining match but a bit on the short side. They could have done a lot more with an extra 7 or 8 minutes allotted to them.