Director: Alex Richanbach
Rating: 4/5
I watched this film just because I was tired, while conducting archival research, but it actually surprised me. I was properly entertained and it got me thinking.
The film follows the life of a young PR associate Harper (Gillian Jacobs) who gets her first assignment from her boss, who can only be described as horrible. Her boss shouts all the time, talks over and she is generally very condescending, which fits into typical representation of women in PR in popular culture.
Harper tells her friends she is going to Barcelona to try to sign up a big Spanish client for her company, and her two friends insist they go with her. I immediately knew that is a bad idea, because taking friends who will want to party while you have important meetings to attend, could never be a good idea. As it turned out, this is exactly what happened, with her friends dragging her to party. As a result she looses her job for being irresponsible, but then she decides to change her life completely, and things seem to work out quite well…
From one point, I do not like the message of screwing up at work and then still getting away with it, and especially not since the film is made in a way that will appeal to younger audiences (e.g. contemporary club music, clubbing, beaches, etc.), who should not be encouraged to risk jobs and loosing references for partying. However, on the other hand, when a job is terrible as Harper’s was, then I suppose it is good that something pushed her away because we do tend to overstay in bad jobs, simply for being afraid to move on. This reminded me of a scene in ‘Friends’ when Chandler and Joey convince Rachel to quit her job as a waitress to get the fear factor, because otherwise she would get stuck in a job she hates forever.
In addition, while I do not encourage screwing up to move on, I did like the way film portrayed the moment Harper got fired. Indeed, if you already screwed up and you are not getting a reference anyway, you might as well give your boss a piece of mind. I don’t think I ever did that when leaving bad jobs, but perhaps I should have told some people to simply F off, instead of inventing reasons why I am leaving, or just not caring so long as I get rid of them. I don’t think I am the type of person who would tell people to simply F off, but imagining that thanks to this film entertained me a lot. Cheers for that!
Thank you for reading.