Quartier général

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!

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.

This is an unfairly forgotten dark comedy/satire classic that spoofs the yuppie/corporate world perfectly. It holds up just as well for today's world as it did then and if anything it was ahead of its time when it came out and sank into obscurity. You can see the genesis of Ken Finklemen's future projects here and it's all wrapped up in a nice 80's package. Maybe the ending is a little too over the top, but it's not enough to ruin a great movie with lots of great scenes.

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!

I agree with most of the previous reviews, but I'd like to emphasize that not only is the first half of this movie great, its as funny and ahead of its time as it gets. An absolute classic and contains some of its actors' best work. Rick Moranis is one of the comic geniuses of his generation and his brief scenes are worth the entire experience alone. I've quoted his big line in appropriate situations (unfortunately to no appreciation / recognition) more than any other movie joke. This is the only feature film where he's as funny as in his best moments from SCTV and SNL. Eddie Albert's very first scene and punch line is one of the greatest satirical jokes ever written of this genre. Michael O'Donoghue's deadpan performance is chillingly convincing, etc, etc. Yes, there is the obligatory Judge Rhienhold "voice of sanity" character who's storyline gradually sinks the movie into formulaic banality (and I subtract just one point for that), but the first half of this thing is an absolute must-see for any satirical comedy fan. I'll go further - this movie, at its best, is the most underrated American comedy ever. Period.