Film

Get a Job

Name: Get a Job
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2016
Cast: Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Bryan Cranston, Nicholas Braun, Brandon T. Jackson

Comedy
Light-hearted

A post-college comedy about a couple navigating entry-level jobs and adult disappointment. It's a brisk, earnest film about the gap between expectation and reality, buoyed by likeable performances and gentle humour. For anyone who's felt unmoored after graduation or struggled to find their footing in early adulthood.

TMDb rating

2.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy shaggy, episodic comedies about a generation stalled after graduation, where the humour sits in mortifying job interviews and a sweetly meddling family.

Skip it if you want a tight plot, since it drifts from one odd job to the next and its mix of farce and earnest drama can feel uneven.

What it asks of you: A brisk, easygoing run of under an hour and a half, loosely shaped, with the laughs arriving in scattered bursts rather than a steady build.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004

A film about how love and identity develop through the mundane. Like Get a Job, it's fundamentally about two people trying to understand what they want when the world doesn't hand them answers; it just wraps that in wistfulness and science fiction instead of comedy.

But It's melancholic and metaphysical rather than funny, and the narrative structure is deliberately fractured. Much heavier emotional weather.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poster

Bridesmaids2011

A comedy about people in their thirties who haven't figured it out yet, finding meaning in friendship despite humiliation and failure. Kristen Wiig's character is adrift in exactly the way Will and Jillian are, though the tone is brassier.

But It's significantly cruder and more cynical than Get a Job. If you want gentle, this is too aggressive.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall2008

Jason Segel plays a guy whose life has imploded and must rebuild from nothing. It balances comedy with genuine vulnerability; it understands that adult failure is often funny precisely because it's also terrifying.

But It pivots toward conventional romance in the third act, and the hotel setting feels escapist rather than grounded in real-world job struggles.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Get a Job

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Russian Ark2002

Both use deceptively small, intimate stories to explore the question of what happens when you stop being certain about who you're supposed to become.

A 90-minute single-take tracking shot through the Hermitage Museum, where two spirits discuss the passage of time and how we define ourselves by what comes next. Like Get a Job, it's about the gap between expectation and reality, identity and circumstance—just painted across centuries instead of job interviews.

But There is no plot, no conventional character arc, and no payoff. It's meditative and visually demanding; many viewers find it beautiful and many find it tedious.

Adventureland2009

Ryan Reynolds and Kristen Stewart working dead-end summer jobs while figuring out their futures. It has Get a Job's affection for underpaid employees and its interest in how small moments become the story of who we become.

But It's set in the 1980s, which feels like an aesthetic choice that distances you from the present-day uncertainty. Also more melancholic than comedic despite the summer-job setup.

Broad City2014

Two friends stumbling through low-paying jobs and constant chaos in New York City. It's absurdist where Get a Job is earnest, but both capture that post-college feeling of being untethered and comedically incompetent.

But It's deliberately trashy and surreal. Broad City doesn't believe in the kind of gentle sentiment that Get a Job trades in.

Overnight2003

A dark comedy about a man trying to launch a career in entertainment and failing spectacularly. It has a similar interest in watching someone struggle against reality, though the tone is significantly meaner and more satirical.

But It's a documentary-style mockumentary about a genuinely unlikeable person. There's no warmth here, and the humour is at the protagonist's expense in ways that feel cruel.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying1967

A musical comedy about a man climbing the corporate ladder through luck and shameless charm. It's fundamentally about navigating work and institutions, capturing that same sense of bemused outsider energy, just in a much glossier package.

But It's a 1967 musical adaptation of a Broadway show. If tap dancing and period conventions aren't your thing, this will feel aggressively hokey and distant from your life.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying poster

Blue Valentine2010

Both are fundamentally about the moment when your life stops being a possibility and becomes a specific, often disappointing reality—but Blue Valentine treats that moment as tragedy while Get a Job treats it as comedy.

Derek Cianfrance traces a relationship from passionate beginning to hollow ending, asking how two people who loved each other end up strangers. It's about the specific betrayal of adulthood not matching the promise you made to each other, told with devastating precision.

But It's brutally sad and physically painful to watch in places. There's no humour, no hope, no reprieve. If Get a Job felt too light, this will feel punitive.

Lean on Pete2018

Where Get a Job finds humour in post-college drift, Lean on Pete finds poetry in it. Both accept that your twenties are often just a series of small, strange jobs that eventually add up to a person.

A boy drifts across America with a racehorse after his life falls apart, learning that survival and connection matter more than plans. It's quiet and episodic, moving through a series of random jobs and encounters; it understands that sometimes your life is just what happens next, not what you intended.

But It's sparse and melancholic, with long stretches of little dialogue or incident. The ending is ambiguous in ways that won't satisfy anyone wanting closure.