While many people look to 1990’s Home Alone as the height of John Hughes’ Hollywood power, I look to the next year, filled with unsung flicks like Only the Lonely, Dutch and, at the top of my list, Career Opportunities, directed by TV’s Bryan Gordon; don’t worry, I haven’t heard of him, either.

The ultimate hipster by today’s standards, Jim Dodge (Frank Whaley) is the ultimate loser: Although over 21 years of age, he lives as home, is the town liar and, worse, starts a job at Target as the overnight janitor. As expected in these studies of arrested development, he goofs off at work, mostly by roller-skating in his boxers while wearing a wedding veil.

This all changes when he meets the alarmingly beautiful Josie (the alarmingly beautiful Jennifer Connelly), an emotionally impoverished rich girl who, apparently, fell asleep in the dressing rooms. Against all rhyme and reason, they fall in love. (Hey, it was the ’90s.)

The movie kind of falls apart in the third act when we’re introduced to two redneck crooks who are there to rob (?) the Target. As annoying as that might be for those who missed the pristine Hughes of the ’80s, it’s easy to forget the coasting Hughes of the ’90s, when comical crooks were a must.

Regardless, I’ve always loved this movie; even though it proved to be a Home Alone for the Gen X crowd that, obviously, had no time for it. Still, much of it worked, mostly due to the likable presence of Connelly and the sheer hope that, if I worked at Target, too, maybe I’d meet a girl like her.

Sadly, I worked at the local library instead, missing my chance. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

As Snowy Peaks Lodge celebrates 40 years in business, greedy real estate maven Maris (Martin Mull, Clue), in full acquire-and-develop mode, does everything he can to ensure it won’t see a 41st. With the lodge’s lease agreement due, Maris schemes to plant a few violations in order to shut ‘er down. Cue the sabotaged snowmobile to crash through a women’s restroom!

So goes the plot of this slob comedy from Police Academy producer Paul Maslansky, clearly hoping for another franchise. That connection was literally Ski Patrol’s selling point.

Oh, yes: Snowy Peaks has a ski patrol, whose members band together to save the lodge and its owner, Pops (Ray Walston, Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Roger Rose (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) has the Steve Guttenberg role as the charming yet immature group leader, pining after a shapely ski instructor (Doctor Mordrid’s Yvette Nipar — or is that Whitesnake’s David Coverdale?) who happens to be Pops’ niece.

T.K. Carter (Doctor Detroit) is the Michael Winslow-esque Black guy with funny voices. Sean Sullivan (Wayne’s World) is the frazzled weirdo, à la Bobcat Goldthwait. Not large but in charge, the appeal-eluding Leslie Jordan (Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King) is the hard-assed G.W. Bailey of the bunch. And so on and so on. Most notable among the cast, however, is future A-list comedy director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) as a nerdy virgin with major dance game.

What begins with Airplane!-style parodic humor quickly becomes a mix of stand-up bits and low-bar slapstick gags, many involving a farting, belching bulldog named Dumpster. One running joke sees a couple knocked over and sliding down the slopes in positions from the Kama Sutra — fully clothed, of course, because Ski Patrol is PG-rated, with women in Day-Glo bikinis coming the closest to screen skin. In other words, if Hot Dog … the Movie were a hot dog, Ski Patrol is a Vienna sausage Mom sliced into teeny-tiny pieces so Baby doesn’t choke.

An avalanche of idiocy, the movie is packed with montages fueled by the combined energy of the era’s advertisements for wine coolers and chewing gum. If you think all this ends with Feig in Tina Turner drag to compete for $1,000 in a local bar’s talent show, followed by Mull stuck in a runaway wiener and shenanigans involving a giant rubber band, you’re correct, but please don’t write a sequel. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.