Talk about How to succeed In Business Without really dying! There have been films about big business ever since the silent era, with films like "The Crowd", "Skyscraper Souls", "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit", "The Apartment" and "Nine to Five" classic examples that alongside modern films like "Up in the Air" and "Big Business" so many of the hypocrisies and immoralities of the working world where people just want to make a living but find themselves becoming cutthroat and neurotic and in the case of this movie, suicidal.
There are two deaths within the first half hour, one from high blood pressure that explodes his heart, and another a suicide dive that executives look on as if a bug has just gotten squashed on the window. The new guy, Judge Reinhold, is a senator's son whom everyone assumes got the job through nepotism, basically tossed around from one executive to another to be trained, and basically he is succeeding without really trying, although I guess you do have to try to succeed at cheating.
The sign that someone is getting fired simply comes by the moving men removing furniture, but what they forget to do is make sure that skyscraper windows are locked or made with unbreakable glass or plastic. Reinhold is joined by famous comic actors of the time including Danny DeVito, once the golden boy, and now a brass target, and Rick Moranis as a frayed nerve one pad of butter from becoming decorations on a slab.
Eddie Albert is the big wig, Jane Seymour a power hungry kiss up (only to the right people), and Wallace Shawn as an executive who has found out that he has limited time to live, determined to go out still fighting in the corporate world. Lori-Nan Engler plays an environmental protester whom Reinhold befriends.
None of these people are really likable, and I certainly wouldn't want to work for any of them, and that's probably why this has fallen into obscurity because it shows a weakness in society that attempts to manipulate people into thinking of power as strength. Executives who have strong religious convictions here proved to be the biggest hypocrites and that creates some wonderful funny ironic moments. While it is completely over the top and even absurd (nobody could be this cool and not end up with the "Who shot J. R.?" plot twist), there is a great deal of truth in the statements that it makes, and coming from Hollywood (probably the most ruthless of all businesses), this attempts to teach lessons that the viewers may think about for a minute but forget about when they walk into their office the next day.
There are two deaths within the first half hour, one from high blood pressure that explodes his heart, and another a suicide dive that executives look on as if a bug has just gotten squashed on the window. The new guy, Judge Reinhold, is a senator's son whom everyone assumes got the job through nepotism, basically tossed around from one executive to another to be trained, and basically he is succeeding without really trying, although I guess you do have to try to succeed at cheating.
The sign that someone is getting fired simply comes by the moving men removing furniture, but what they forget to do is make sure that skyscraper windows are locked or made with unbreakable glass or plastic. Reinhold is joined by famous comic actors of the time including Danny DeVito, once the golden boy, and now a brass target, and Rick Moranis as a frayed nerve one pad of butter from becoming decorations on a slab.
Eddie Albert is the big wig, Jane Seymour a power hungry kiss up (only to the right people), and Wallace Shawn as an executive who has found out that he has limited time to live, determined to go out still fighting in the corporate world. Lori-Nan Engler plays an environmental protester whom Reinhold befriends.
None of these people are really likable, and I certainly wouldn't want to work for any of them, and that's probably why this has fallen into obscurity because it shows a weakness in society that attempts to manipulate people into thinking of power as strength. Executives who have strong religious convictions here proved to be the biggest hypocrites and that creates some wonderful funny ironic moments. While it is completely over the top and even absurd (nobody could be this cool and not end up with the "Who shot J. R.?" plot twist), there is a great deal of truth in the statements that it makes, and coming from Hollywood (probably the most ruthless of all businesses), this attempts to teach lessons that the viewers may think about for a minute but forget about when they walk into their office the next day.