Career Opportunities - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Not many movies have nailed this very specific angst of being an early-20-something with absolutely no idea what the hell you want to do with yourself. Sure, the most famous example is The Graduate, but Benjamin Braddock had graduated college. What about us slackasses that never graduated college and we have to make do with whatever piddly job comes our way?

And so, that’s how Jim (Frank Whaley) finds himself working the night shift, all alone, at his local Target performing clean-up and other janitorial duties. Jim is, by all accounts, a loser. He can’t hold down a job. His parents want him out of their house. He’s a pathological liar and everyone in town knows it. But the best thing about Career Opportunities is that it doesn’t spend its time laughing at him. Instead, the screenplay by none other than John Hughes uses Josie (Jennifer Connelly) to hold a mirror to him.

Here, you have Jim’s pretty much exact opposite. Josie is pretty. She’s rich. And she’s popular. She can do whatever she wants to do. But, like Jim, she’s equally aimless and has no idea what she wants to do with her life, so she tries to shoplift from the local Target Jim works at to make her dad mad, but she can’t even do that right. We spend an evening with these two young kids and get to know them as they get to know each other. There’s a genuine chemistry between the two. When she smiles, or when he smiles, it feels sincere.

Career Opportunities isn’t interested in calling Jim and Josie losers. It’s never quite that cynical. Like Dawn of the Dead before it, the movie delights in its setting of a store, a monument to capitalism, in which you have total carte blanche. You wanna try on silly clothes and rollerskate around the aisles? Make yourself some hobo chicken in one of the display microwaves? The night is long and the night is yours.

My main complaint with the film is that the ending, involving two criminals and a robbery, feels like a diversion rather than an organic twist to the plot. It’s not bad, and it’s clearly telegraphed ahead of time, it just feels less fun than everything else that came before it. Career Opportunities is the kind of movie I feel like I should have seen, and would have loved, as a kid discovering it on TV. Having discovered it at nearly 40, on 4K UHD Blu-ray, makes it no less charming. It’s a good time at the movies. And while imperfect, and the male gaze does get to be a bit much as the camera slobbers all over Jennifer Connelly, it’s very, very charming.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Kino Lorber adds a two-disc release for Career Opportunities to its shopping cart. The main feature is available in 4K and 1080p presentations on each respective disc, and while both discs feature the audio commentary tracks, the other supplements like the interviews, are only found on the Blu-ray. Both discs are housed in a standard case, with a removable slipcover containing identical artwork on both. 

Kino Lorber maintains its tradition of giving surprisingly great transfers to the last movies you’d expect. Now, don’t get me wrong, Career Opportunities was shot on 35mm by all-time great cinematographer Donald McAlpine, so it’s no slouch in the visual aesthetic realm. But Kino Lorber could have merely slapped this onto a Blu-ray with an HD video presentation and called it a day and people would have been perfectly happy with it. Instead, we’ve given a brand-new transfer, in 4K, from the film’s original camera negative, and graded in Dolby Vision HDR. It looks awesome. Details are sharp, and the reds and whites of the Target department store gleam and pop with appropriate clarity. This transfer also maintains its filmic roots through a fine layer of grain throughout.

Like most Kino Lorber releases, viewers have the option between a 2.0 stereo mix and a 5.1 surround mix, both encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. There’s not a tremendous amount of difference between the two, honestly, in toggling back and forth—the 5.1 mix is clearly an upmix of the stereo option, with all the music (including a fun score by Thomas Newman and near-constant needle drops) engulfing the soundstage. With both mixes, dialogue clarity is favored, but music and other effects pack a hell of a punch, as needed.

Career Opportunities has a handful of decent features for fans to make their way through, including a couple interviews, two feature-length audio commentaries, and some trailers. The supplements here aren’t amazing, but considering this is a box office flop from nearly 35 years ago, there’s more than enough here for fans.

• Audio Commentary – Director Bryan Gordon
• Audio Commentary – Chicago Critics Film Festival Producer Erik Childress
• Crafting Criminals (HD 15:52) – Interview with actors Dermot and Kieran Mulroney
• Interior.Night.: (HD 10:43) – Interview with cinematographer Donald McApline
• Trailers

Career Opportunities may not be a classic, but damned if it’s not charming. It’s a total fantasy—the dream of spending a lonely evening in a playground of consumerism with a pretty girl hanging on your every word. Seeing the two bond over the course of the evening is the film’s main charm. Kino Lorber’s video transfer is top-notch, with a pair of audio tracks that are no slouch either, and some very fun special features. Career Opportunities on 4K UHD Blu-ray is Recommended.