Movie review: ‘Head Office’

FloridaGator80
A promotional “still” photo from the movie “Head Office.”

The economy was going good in 1986 when “Head Office” came out and it was nearly two years later that “Black Monday” struck on the world’s markets and made sure there was little humor to find in the financial industry. However, “Head Office” took aim before the crash and used ham-handed humor to tear off a piece of corporate hide with slices that were just as truthful as they were funny or tasteless. The sad part is that its criticisms remain valid today (if not even more so) and corporate greed, ignorance, cruelty and stupidity remain unchecked and indeed celebrated as the apex of American society. Check out “Head Office,” if you can find it.

‘Head Office’
(1986; 90 minutes; rated PG-13; directed by Ken Finkleman and starring Judge Reinhold, Eddie Albert and Richard Masur)

IT ONLY MAKES SENSE IF YOU’RE WITH THE COMPANY

(NOTE: I expanded this review by reorganizing it and giving more opinion and trivia and the updating links on May 29, 2021. I again expanded the review on Oct. 22, 2025.)

One pure pleasure of watching “Head Office” from 1986 is how Eddie Albert, the exasperated but pure-of-heart lawyer-turned-farmer in TV’s “Green Acres,” pinballs from one scene to the next as the nasty and all-powerful corporate chief “Pete Helmes.” He relishes taking over countries, destroying lives and even keeps in touch with the common person by reviewing individual delinquent phone accounts. “Diss-connect,” he spits out with contempt when ordering his minions to cut off phone service to regular Joes with a balance due.

Another pure pleasure is the list of “lessons” given to corporate rookie “Jack Issel” played by Judge Reinhold. The laundry list of lessons is given by Richard Masur, who plays corporate-wise mentor “Max Landsberger,” and he gives a running mocking of the corporation to Reinhold through these “lessons.” One is solid gold: “Lesson No. 79. When the tough get going, the weak get screwed.”

The “lessons” continue from Reinhold’s entry to the company and then throughout his odd journey on the ultra-fast track (since his father is a powerful politician and hiring Judge was one way to get in the father’s best wishes by the company).

Although there’s great messaging throughout the film, by the end it isn’t the radical film you might have thought it would be. Still, it’s a comedy and not a philosophical treatise on corporate America. It picks obvious pimples and then pops them to your delight.

Now, for the ostensible headliners …

  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Reinhold is simply not the caliber of an actor who can carry a film. He is great when his character is part of an overall situation, do he’s good here because of the acting landscape and gets great screen time. However, another actor (say Eddie Murphy?) would have been able to accomplish more. Reinhold was fresh from his roles in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” where he played second fiddle to Murphy, for his turn here and gets a passing grade. He was nominated for his work in a “Seinfeld” episode titled “Raincoats.”
  • I just can’t write enough about how much I enjoyed two-time Oscar nominee (not for this one) Albert in this one. He simply oozes the part with energy, verve and flair. I know this isn’t an award-winning effort on his part, but I like it … a lot. In his acting career, Albert was nominated for supporting roles in “Roman Holiday” in 1953 and the original “The Heartbreak Kid” in 1972. He had 204 acting credits in a career spanning an incredible seven decades from the first in 1936 to the last in 1997. Just as incredible, before becoming an actor Albert was a circus trapeze flier. He died at 99 in 2005 of pneumonia.

Another pure pleasure is the supporting characters, who are manic, backstabbing, lecherous and uber-ambitious. Actors including Danny DeVito, Rick Moranis and Jane Seymour, turn out exemplary efforts in what is pretty much an ensemble cast after Reinhold.

“Head Office” focuses on Reinhold, a graduate fresh from a top-tier MBA school and who comes to the attention of Albert’s company because his father is an influential U.S. senator. The hire of Reinhold will help solidify the senator’s influence on Albert’s moving a company factory from the U.S. to another country.

So, up the corporate ladder goes Reinhold. “They keep promoting me but I don’t do anything,” he tells Masur. Another way to success, Masur says, is “Lesson No. 4. The secret to survival is never make a decision” and there’s a cut to Moranis jabbering into his phone about who made a decision on a bad PR campaign, “I didn’t make that decision! I approved somebody else’s decision! Don’t you know the difference between a decision and approval?”

Subplots include a corporate culture dominated by Gestapo-like tactics (the filmmakers love Nazi imagery, including having a German-speaking presenter at a corporate “prayer breakfast” who resembles Josef Goebbels yakking into a vintage microphone at a rally). As for the acting, you get:

  • A promotional “still” photo from the movie “Head Office.”

    An executive successfully sleeping her way to the top is Seymour, who is a Primetime Emmy winner and four-time nominee. She does a solid job here playing “Jane Caldwell” and is the executive on the fast-track up on her back – and she revels in all the corporate intrigue. Seymour’s win was for the miniseries “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” and her four nominations include two from her signature show “ Quinn, Medicine Woman.” Of course, all fans of superspy 007 will remember her as “Solitare,” who is the love interest to Roger Moore in “Live and Let Die” from 1973 (click here to read my review).

  • One doomed character who leaves much too early is Oscar nominee DeVito (not for this one) as “Frank Stedman,” who jumps out a window (and most of the other cast watch as he plumets past their windows) when his career crash-lands figuratively in a company stock fiasco and literally in the company’s entrance fountain. Too bad that filmmakers didn’t keep his character around longer. DeVito has an outstanding resume that I couldn’t begin to list here, but let me say he was outstanding in both “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger (click here to read my review) and “Ruthless People” along with Reinhold in an underrated and somewhat forgotten comedy from the Abrahams-Zucker team (click here to read my review). DeVito got his nomination as co-producer for best picture in the overrated crapfest called “Erin Brockovich.”
  • A promotional “still” photo from the movie “Head Office.”

    Another doomed character who leaves too early is Primetime Emmy winner and three-time nominee Moranis as “Howard Gross.” He’s the over-excitable PR executive who dies of a heart attack in his office. Moranis is especially funny since he’s always on the phone and blathering things like, “I’ve got a dead father-in-law who’s pissed off because he’s in semi-private” when listing the woes of his life to whomever happens to be talking to him. Moranis is another outstanding comedy actor and writer. All of his Emmy laurels stem from writing for SCTV and I enjoyed his acting most in “My Blue Heaven” with Steve Martin (click here for my review). Moranis did a wonderful job in the kids football flick “Little Giants” (click here to read my review) as well as solid work in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and “Ghostbusters.” Moranis’ most underrated performance is in “Streets of Fire” (click here to read my review).

By the way, neither of these is worth a spoiler alert since they both go by the 25th minute of the film. DeVito and Moranis each bring physical humor to their roles as well as the verbal adrenaline necessary to make each a success. Too bad filmmakers couldn’t have killed offer other, less-talented actors left these two on-screen longer.

Now, here’s a look at some of the supporting actors:

  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Masur is totally smooth and unflappable, even as he introduces Reinhold to the body of a company executive who died in his office. He is perfectly cast as the corporate guide to the younger man. Masur is a prolific actor with 146 acting credits through mid-2021. His first was an episode of “All in the Family” in 1974 where he plays a mentally-challenged character to other TV shows including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Waltons,” “M*A*S*H” and “A. Law.” In cinema, he’s been in such varied films as “Who’ll Stop the Rain” with Nick Nolte, “Risky Business” with Tom Cruise and the newspaper minor classic “The Mean Season” with Kurt Russell. Masur was nominated for “The Burning Bed” with Farrah Fawcett.
  • Merritt Butrick as the oily worm “John Hudson,” who is the antithesis of Reinhold. Butrick does slimy butt-kissing very well, but his career credits end with his death in 1989 after he appeared on a string of TV shows and was in films such as “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (click here for my review) as “Capt. James T. Kirk’s” son “David” and reprising that role in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” He died in 1989 at 29 of AIDS, according to IMDb.com.
  • The romantic entanglement comes through Lori-Nan Engler who plays “Rachael Helmes.” She’s an activist out to save the town that Albert wants to destroy because it can be a tax credit. It also turns out she’s the boss’ daughter and that, of course, is this film’s only plot twist. “Head Office” was Engler’s final film credit (she had one more on a soap opera in 1989) with only two other films, including “Blow Out” with John Travolta, and three TV credits on her resume, which ends with the last acting credit for a soap opera in 1989.
  • A promotional “still” photo from the movie “Head Office.”

    A six-time Primetime Emmy nominee, Don Novello, best known as “Father Guido Sarducci” on “Saturday Night Live,” is the laid-back company chauffeur “Sal.” He’s mellow and just cruises along (no pun intended). Novello does a great job of not putting his character over-the-top and moves well with what little was given him in the film. Novello didn’t have to stretch much for this character, but, then again, “laid back” is obviously his style. He was nominated three times for “SNL,” twice for SCTV and once for the short-lived “Van Dyke and Company” (it lasted just 11 episodes). He reprised the “Father Guido Sarducci” role in the 1995 film version of “Casper” and was in “The Godfather: Part III.”

The shots at corporate America come quick and run throughout the film, from the obsequious international-class brown-noser Ron Frazier, who plays “Bob Nixon,” to the company’s bald-faced lie of a message that it’s losing money on the U.S. plant and needs to relocate. When Reinhold remarks that that statement is not true, Masur comes back with, “No, but it’s our side of the story.” Frazier died at 64 in 2003.

Near the end, one of Reinhold’s remarks kind of sums up the mood: “This place is totally bananas. Any reasonable, normal person would have quit a long time ago.”

In the final analysis, “Head Office” is only so-so when taken as a whole and has the feel-good ending that you’d expect. Still, it’s a comedy with a message that it milks for laughs, but it is certainly not deep drama with a message (unless the filmmakers wanted that and I just missed it).

“Head Office” made a paltry $3.3 million and was the 123rd ranked film at the box office for 1986 (I could not find an estimated budget for this one), according to its Wiki entry. The No. 1 film was Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” with $176.7 million and followed closely by Paul Hogan in “Crocodile Dundee” with $174.8 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Here are the films from that year that I have reviewed:

Here are some cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Albert’s birth name was Edward Albert Heimberger; Reinhold’s birth name is Edward Ernest Reinhold Jr.; Butrick’s nickname was “Richie;” and Seymour’s birth name is Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg.
  • Boxing promoter Don King has his only film credit here with a hilarious send-up as an INC executive gushing in his trademark way. King, in his acting outside his boxing promotions, was on episodes of “Miami Vice” and “Knight Rider.” He even did an episode of “Blossom.”
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “When Stedman (Danny Devito) is looking at the article about him being investigated for illegally selling shares of stocks, the photo in the paper of Devito is actually still shot of his Taxi character Louie De Palma.”

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