Get a Job

Get a job! It's a simple sentence, but it gives rise to many difficult questions. (What kind of job do I want? Where do I look to find the right one? How do I get them to hire me?) And then, when you get a job, there's another set of challenges. (How do I do this job? What indignities am I willing to suffer to keep this job? When do I move on and try to get a better job?) Sometimes, the job you get doesn't work out and you have to start asking those same questions all over again. An all-star cast of well-known movie and TV actors deals with these issues – and others, in the well-titled comedy "Get a Job" (R, 1:23).

Will (Miles Teller), Ethan (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Charlie (Nicholas Braun) and Luke (Brandon T. Jackson) are pot-smoking, video game playing L.A. housemates who have recently graduated from college. The four of them, as well as Will's girlfriend, Jillian (Anna Kendrick) are at various stages of trying to figure out how best to make money in the world of grown-ups. Charlie is about to start a job as a junior high school science teacher (for which he seems quite unqualified) and basketball coach (ditto). Luke's dream is to work as a stock broker, but his entry-level position working in the firm managed by Mr. Diller (John C. McGinley) has Luke taking orders for just about everything but stocks. Ethan believes he's going to make his way in the world by developing and selling a smart-phone app called "IstalkU".

But the main focus of the movie is on Teller's character. As the movie opens, Will believes he has turned two summers of unpaid interning at the L.A. Weekly into a full-time job as their new tech writer… until one of the editors (John Cho) tells him differently. Will gets a job as a night-shift desk clerk in a cheap hotel run by an unscrupulous hotel manager (Marc Maron), but that job only lasts until local pimp "Skeezy D" (Jay Pharoah) messes things up for Will. Surprisingly, however, Will's association with Skeezy D indirectly helps him secure a great job as a videographer for a firm which producers video resumes and secures interviews for people seeking upper-level management positions. Will convinces Lawrence Willheimer (Bruce Davison) to hire him, but he soon finds out that taking orders from harsh and demanding CEO Katherine Dunn (Marcia Gay Harden) and dealing with sexual advances from a co-worker (Alison Brie) makes the job a little less desirable than he first thought it would be. A mysteriously omnipresent janitor (Jorge Garcia) ends up helping Will out, but while Will is trying to navigate the choppy waters of interoffice politics, he also has to deal with the fallout from both his girlfriend and his father (Bryan Cranston) losing their respective jobs – and the misadventures of his friends on their jobs.

This is a rather unusual movie in a few different ways. It's a comedy, but delivers an important message to its target audience. Although the challenge of getting and keeping a good job is seen through the eyes of several people at different stages of their working lives, the focus is on the generation known as the Millenials. Characters within this generation that is often derided for a sense of entitlement and lack of motivation are shown learning necessary lessons that will equip them for success in the future, while remaining true to themselves and pursuing their dreams. The film's ability to simultaneously validate, teach and encourage Millenials is unusual, but so is the amount of time this film took to get to theaters.

"Get a Job" was filmed in early 2012. Anna Kendrick said in a 2014 interview that the film had encountered "distribution problems". Whatever the specific reasons for the delay, it's interesting to note that in the four years between this movie being shot and made available to the public, these are just some of the projects that a few of the main cast filmed AND saw released: "Fantastic Four", "Whiplash", "The Spectacular Now" and three "Divergent" films (Teller); "Cake", "Into the Woods" and "Pitch Perfect 2" (Kendrick); "How to Be Single", "Get Hard", "Sleeping with Other People" and "The Lego Movie" (Brie); "Neighbors", "Kick-Ass 2" and "This is the End" (Mintz-Plasse); "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", "How to Be Single", "The Stanford Prison Experiment", and "Poltergeist" (Braun); "Fifty Shades of Grey", "Grandma" and "Parkland" (Harden); plus "Kung Fu Panda 3", "Trumbo", "Godzilla" and the end of "Breaking Bad" (Cranston). Just sayin'.

Whether the delay in the film's release, or the low scores it has received on various websites, raise too many red flags to ignore is, of course, up to the individual Movie Fan, but this Movie Fan is giving "Get a Job" a moderate recommendation. The cast is easy of the eyes and fun to watch. The story is a bit disjointed and is a little short on laughs, but it's often charming and approaches real issues with truth and compassion. The movie tells its tale in a meaningful and pretty entertaining way. "B"