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Great Career Movies for the Holidays

Working Girl Movie Poster | 20th Century Fox
Working Girl Movie Poster | 20th Century Fox

Let’s face it. We are going to watch a whole bunch of moves over the next couple of weeks. We will be nursing hangovers, escaping family or just enjoying some high quality couch time.

Netflix and On-Demand movies give us so many choices. How will you decide?

Here are my recommendations for great movies with a career lessons built right in. I am not saying they will cause you to edit your resume the moment you are done, but you might want to keep your laptop handy, just in case.

Working Girl – classic comedy with Melanie Griffiths, Sigourney Weaver and a very young Harrison Ford. A great story and it’s pretty neat to see all these stars when they were just starting out.

9 – 5 – dated but very funny movie about the ladies in the secretarial pool taking over the world. Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin round out this cast.

Mrs Doubtfire – Robin Williams shines as a divorced dad who has to take on a whole new career to be able to see his kids

Tootsie – Dustin Hoffman transforms himself into a soap opera actress ” of a certain age” to get an acting job with hysterical and unpredictable results.

Wolf of Wall Street – Leonardo de Caprio brings us the whole career of the infamous trader who won and lost a huge fortune. There are lots of lessons here.

Catch Me if You Can– an another Leo de Caprio character study. This one is interesting because the main character is a con man who takes on a dozen careers throughout the movie. A good study of how far street smarts and a little nerve will get you. (Although it’s helpful to have a broken moral compass too).

Margin Call – a young analyst played by Chris Pine learns about the ugly side of Wall Street careers with Kevin Spacey leading an excellent cast ensemble.

Patch Adams – you will need a couple of tissues for this one but it is worth it. Robin Williams takes us through the true story of a man who rose to become a well known physician, clown and author. Enough said.

Feel free to post a comment about your favourites. I am sure there are lots more.

Happy holidays!