It's always hard to completely blast films like Get a Job because beneath an exterior of crude humor and a meandering narrative lies themes and ideas with underlying truth. The problem is that Get a Job brings such ideas to the surface but fails to capitalize on them, so it feels like they were just mere coincidences and conveniences. This wouldn't be such an issue if the film wasn't ostensibly in a hurry to go nowhere, predicating itself off of characters that feel cloyingly artificial and impractical, as well as introducing a plethora of subplots that serve no purpose other than to clutter a story with the overarching idea that life and employment in the modern world is hard, man.
The story follows Will and Jillian (Miles Teller and Anna Kendrick), a pair of recent college graduates who are looking to move in together and break out into the real-world. Will looks to have a promising gig lined up as a video-maker for a magazine, and Jillian has just taken a position in sales. Throughout his entire life, Will has heard from his father (Bryan Cranston) about his own struggle with trying to move up in the world to the position of power he's currently in, until, in a twist of events, him, Will, and Jillian are all laid off from their jobs.
This is one of the films where Will and his three deadbeat friends (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicholas Braun, and Brandon T. Jackson), who all appear to have no immediate goals besides getting high and playing Xbox, can somehow afford a beautiful loft overlooking the city. The only one who seems to be doing something productive with his time is Charlie (Braun), who is somehow certified to teach chemistry to grade-school children. After a long search, Will winds up finding a position as a digital marketer under the order of Marcia Gay Harden, who implements somewhat oppressive and dehumanizing standards in her workplace, so much so that Will feels limited in his creativity when he finally begins working the job.
The remainder of the film is a whole lot of nothing, with characters wandering around, but never saying anything too compelling, Jillian becoming a lazy pothead with Will's best friends, and Will's father losing his entire identity upon being canned at his workplace. For a brief time, screenwriters Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel's screenplay seems like it is going to etch in some commentary about Will's father's lack of self-identity outside of his office-duties, potentially leading down a path that highlights ideas and commentary on the millennial workplace and how young people are not letting jobs define them as people.
But that part never arrives, and we're left with watching mostly strong actors aimlessly navigate through pitfalls and trappings of lame comedic conventions. For a screenplay so generic and remarkably dry given all it has to work with, it's the kind of vehicle that you can tell attracted its young actors and actresses as a means of getting their foot in the door to hopefully bigger and better projects. Justifying what Bryan Cranston and Marcia Gay Harden saw in the material, however, is a bit tougher.
Apparently, Get a Job was shot in 2012 and planned for a larger theatrical release, but it sat on the shelf for four years, at one point with Kendrick commenting how it may never get a release due to distribution issues. Finally, in 2016, it was given a very limited theatrical and video-on demand release on various platforms, ending the film's checkered history, which we'll probably never get to fully know anyway. If nothing else, this only furthers the above assumption as to why talents like Teller and Kendrick would even bother with such a subpar script, as Get a Job's belated release only works to effectively remind and blemish both actors' (particularly Teller's) iffy filmographies when they're simply trying to be tomorrow's Oscar winners.
Starring: Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicholas Braun, Brandon T. Jackson, Marcia Gay Harden, Alison Brie, and John Cho. Directed by: Dylan Kidd.
The story follows Will and Jillian (Miles Teller and Anna Kendrick), a pair of recent college graduates who are looking to move in together and break out into the real-world. Will looks to have a promising gig lined up as a video-maker for a magazine, and Jillian has just taken a position in sales. Throughout his entire life, Will has heard from his father (Bryan Cranston) about his own struggle with trying to move up in the world to the position of power he's currently in, until, in a twist of events, him, Will, and Jillian are all laid off from their jobs.
This is one of the films where Will and his three deadbeat friends (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicholas Braun, and Brandon T. Jackson), who all appear to have no immediate goals besides getting high and playing Xbox, can somehow afford a beautiful loft overlooking the city. The only one who seems to be doing something productive with his time is Charlie (Braun), who is somehow certified to teach chemistry to grade-school children. After a long search, Will winds up finding a position as a digital marketer under the order of Marcia Gay Harden, who implements somewhat oppressive and dehumanizing standards in her workplace, so much so that Will feels limited in his creativity when he finally begins working the job.
The remainder of the film is a whole lot of nothing, with characters wandering around, but never saying anything too compelling, Jillian becoming a lazy pothead with Will's best friends, and Will's father losing his entire identity upon being canned at his workplace. For a brief time, screenwriters Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel's screenplay seems like it is going to etch in some commentary about Will's father's lack of self-identity outside of his office-duties, potentially leading down a path that highlights ideas and commentary on the millennial workplace and how young people are not letting jobs define them as people.
But that part never arrives, and we're left with watching mostly strong actors aimlessly navigate through pitfalls and trappings of lame comedic conventions. For a screenplay so generic and remarkably dry given all it has to work with, it's the kind of vehicle that you can tell attracted its young actors and actresses as a means of getting their foot in the door to hopefully bigger and better projects. Justifying what Bryan Cranston and Marcia Gay Harden saw in the material, however, is a bit tougher.
Apparently, Get a Job was shot in 2012 and planned for a larger theatrical release, but it sat on the shelf for four years, at one point with Kendrick commenting how it may never get a release due to distribution issues. Finally, in 2016, it was given a very limited theatrical and video-on demand release on various platforms, ending the film's checkered history, which we'll probably never get to fully know anyway. If nothing else, this only furthers the above assumption as to why talents like Teller and Kendrick would even bother with such a subpar script, as Get a Job's belated release only works to effectively remind and blemish both actors' (particularly Teller's) iffy filmographies when they're simply trying to be tomorrow's Oscar winners.
Starring: Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicholas Braun, Brandon T. Jackson, Marcia Gay Harden, Alison Brie, and John Cho. Directed by: Dylan Kidd.