10 Movies Weirdly Changed In Foreign Countries
7. Germany Pretended It Was A Home Alone Spin-Off - Career Opportunities
By the early 90s, John Hughes was largely on his way to burning out. He managed one last major success with Home Alone, but the voice of the 80s was striking out more often than not in the new decade. Said flops included Curly Sue, Dutch, Baby's Day Out, Dennis The Menace and the little-loved Career Opportunities.
The film saw young character actor Frank Whaley as a young Target janitor who is locked in overnight with a then-unknown Jennifer Connelly. The two form a romantic bond, foil some incompetent crooks and walk away a couple in what most critics wrote off as a complete failure. Whaley, first excited to have his face plastered on billboards all over L.A., concurred:
"The movie kind of tanked... I think if they made that movie today it would be kind of cool, but it just lacked a little bit of the reverence of other movies written by John Hughes."
To Hughes' credit, he claims he lacked any creative control and his suggestions during the shoot were ignored. Upon release, he called it "cheap and vulgar", backing Connelly's unease about the marketing that sexualized her.
So foreign countries must have been concerned about its performance, given the aggressive marketing the U.S. had spent on it. In the hopes of tying it to Hughes' more successful fare, Germany's solution was ingenious: "Kevins Cousin allein im Supermarkt" or Home Alone 3 suggests that Whaley is Kevin McCallister's cousin, making it an unofficial spinoff from the franchise.