IMDb user comments for
Head Office (1985)

advertisement

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

Index

19 comments in total

---

4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent movie for those working in large corporations, 6 June 2000

Author: petervee from Ottawa, Canada

As the other reviewer says, this is definitely a gem of a movie! If you work in a 15000+ employee corporation, you will see what we mean.

Danny De Vito is excellent as a manager who has been forced to jump to his early fall from an office window; Don Novello as the car driver with a taste for Julio Iglessias; Judge Rheinhold playing Jack Issel is great as the son of a congressman; Rick Moranis as a PR head is also great especially with the delivery of the line "I love this business" as he is checking his blood pressure; as is Jane Seymour, offering the line, after making love to a colleague: 'I wouldn't be much if a screwed my way to the bottom."

Great movie all round. I specially liked the line "we make everything from toilet paper to nuclear power plants."

You will certainly enjoy this one!

---

2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Really, a great move, 14 February 2006

Author: zink-6 (zink@zinknet.com) from United States

Why hasn't anyone given this a 10 ? Well, agreed that the beginning is the best, but I don't think the movie falls off that much. I agree that this movie predates the office space mentality that has made it so popular. This is a closet classic. The scene w/ Rick Moranis is probably the funnier than any one scene in spaceballs. Doesn't that count for anything ? The boardroom meeting is great, the promoting of a politician's son in order to get his favor is something that does happen all the time. This movie does make a mockery of some of corporate America, but its funny - so what's wrong with that? Unlike the previous gentleman's comments, there is nothing communist about this movie. So Watch it. "Black shoes only in this company, Mister"

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
too funny not to watch, too bad not to turn off, 21 July 2005

Author: iroiro from United States

Head Office is the only film I know that truly deserves mention when discussing both the best and the worst of comedies. It contains a first half hour that is classic, a perfect combination of intelligent bite and ridiculous slapstick. The jokes barely leave you time to recover before the next one hits.

The amazing comic quality of Jack's first day at the office can only be topped by the movie's amazing fall into an unwatchable steaming heap. It may be the most amazing plunge ever taken by a movie.

For that reason it is a must see. Rent it. Get something to snack on from the fridge during the gratuitous-sex-joke opening. Make sure you're back for the graduation sequence and that you have a stable place to set your drink and enjoy the laughs. When Jane Seymour's character gives her speech, a momentary soul search in her new office, you have a decision to make. You can turn it off, which is my suggestion, or watch a Hollywood story plunge some great comic writing off a cliff.

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
7/8ths Perfect, 5 December 2003

Author: Daniel Coffey (mauditeanglo@hotmail.com) from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

This movie, like many in the 1980's suffers from studio slandering. The movie is brilliantly funny for the first half. An original satire on the wall street world. The second half and climax suffers from weak plotting and a silly shoot-out. Like most eighties movies. I still don't understand why they thought every comedy ought to have had one. Definitely watch this movie though. You will laugh alot.

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
poor Reinhold in the complaints department..., 9 June 2003
Author: sheeleyb from Middlesex, MA

I have read the other comments here and I do understand everyone has their point of view. I agree that if you have never worked for a huge corporation (where employees are numbers not faces)then this movie will probably seem like nothing more than a stooges flick with big name cameos. I as a rental when I was working for Raytheon as a secretary and I can officially say that this movie is hysterical. It starts out fast in the opening with DeVito and then later on with poor Reinhold in the complaints department... if you have ever worked for PR or Customer support this will hit home in extremes! I love it and have looked for the video for years when it seemed to disappear off the face of the Video world (unless you bought it from a used video store's antique collection). I still hope it will eventually be released to DVD but until then I will be content with my video and hope to not wear it out. :)

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
When the tough get going, the weak get screwed., 25 September 1998

Author: Dave Collins (drcollins@yahoo.com) from Roseville, CA , USA

This movie is not very well known, but it's a gem. If you have worked in a large corporate environment, you are sure to see something here you recognize. This is sort of a pre-technology age Dilbert (because of the whole office world thing). It is the story of a young man ,Jack, just out of Business School. His father is a senator and the Corporation (INC is their name) is trying to get government backing for work they are doing in South America. They hire Jack as a way to control the senator. Jack goes up the corporate ladder quickly and he watches others fall, yet he does nothing to deserve his advancement. A lot of funny stuff about corporate politics. Great people in this little movie.

---

2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Too close to the truth!, 23 January 2000

Author: BBD-3 (eskdale@earthlink.net) from Perry Hall, MD

I was sitting around the other day looking for a movie and found this one. Having nothing better to do, I watched it without any hopes of great comedy entertainment. I was wrong. I laughed all the way through. Why? Because it so much resembled the Fortune 500 Company I used to work for! Kids if you're smart you'll avoid big business. Its wasteful, evil and the way practiced, brings out the worst in human nature. Watch this movie, for in its satirical way it shows everything wrong with American business practices in big corporate America. When the executives were lunching and actually gave some credence to the flippant remark that Issel made "why not just kill him", it struck home with me, because I believe that at least some corporate executives would not stop at murder to accomplish an end--usually a personal one and not even one to further their companies. To me this satire works oh too well!

---

Different from, well, any other film, kind of., 26 February 2006

Author: thewakinghour from Japan

A very odd movie, this.

By no means a great, or more than mildly entertaining, movie In other words a Judd H. trademark flick. HOWEVER, many of the scenes have haunted me since first seeing it upon its debut, never to see it again since.

Certain scenes and lines are incredible funny, or perverse: especially Eddie Albert's president. The board meetings are all incredible funny. Albert's reaction at a board meeting to a anti-government bombing of "Mr. Chicken" franchises results in a speech that is completely absurd, and yet it differs very little from the speeches given by real business leaders and politicians who link what is now called "globalization" with the exercise of human rights.

Devito IS also good, but in a side story. And Don King spouts wonderful nonsense, ignored by everyone, in a cameo made during the brief period he, and his hairstyle, were seen as charmingly wacky.

It is worth seeing, should you run across it and do not expect too much.

---

Great comedy and social commentary with 1 or 2 lulls, 13 July 2005

Author: tmus2 from United States

The first half hour of this movie is filled with great comic moments and some exceptional cameos (a la Rick Moranis, Danny DeVito). Head Office is a great comment on American industry's glut and self-absorption as well as the bureaucracy inherent in all levels of business. Office Space did for the '90s what Head Office did for the '80s.

Rick Moranis' cameo is his funniest work ever. Jane Seymour was born to play this role. The boardroom commentary and situations are so funny, yet also leave you with that awkward feeling which so often accompanies gatherings of that type. Without putting spoilers in I can't prove the case, so just rent it. Better yet, buy it and pass it around.

---

Are YOU Executive Material?, 4 December 2003

Author: lambiepie-2 from Los Angeles, CA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

When this film first came on cable in the 80's, I was still young and it it wasn't that funny to me.

Now, some 18 years later, the first half hour of this film had me in stitches. The rest of the film though..is still pretty much uneven and dull.

First of all, if you can't identify with Big American Corporate and how those companies actually work -- this film will do nothing for you from the start. If you can identify, then after the first half hour you'll loose interest.

When I first saw this film, I didn't have a job and was just getting out of college. Now, I can identify with all the players that are introduced in that first half hour for I can say: I've worked at those kinds of companies.

The backbiting, the moving an Executive out of an office ("I don't give a damn how loyal to the company he is, he's out!"), early stock sales from insider information, the "please don't tell anyone my problem", the two-faced over achieving women in the workplace, the jockying for parking spots, the high blood pressure head of PR/Marketing, its all here..including the "prayer breakfast meeting"(let me just say the company I was at that reflected the prayer breakfast meetings has a rodent as a Brand!). I can't help but laugh about it now, but when you're going through it it isn't funny. This film takes a good insider poke at it all in this half hour. Sadly, that's all there is in this film and it dies a fast death from there.

The rest of the film after that wanders into a "slacker Senator's son tries to make good on the environment and gets the gal" type of thing and that doesn't work for me.

For all out there who are just entering the Corporate workforce from that BA or MBA, the first half hour will give you pearls of wisdom you need to carry as you work "for the next 40 years of your life".

Favorite pearls? Here's one that always makes me laugh:

Executive: "Are you Executive material?" New Guy: "Do you mean I am on the ball? Yes." Executive: "No, I mean, can you kiss ass?"

And:

Executive to New Guy: "If you want to survive, never directly make a decision."

Other than that, you might want to skip this film. So for me, the first 1/2 hour of this film is a 6 on a scale of ten, the rest a 2.

---

---

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	External reviews
Plot keywords	Main details	Your user comments
Your vote history