Can The Office Stars Have Any Success Outside of Dunder Mifflin?

[Brian Damage]

Back in the 90's when Friends dominated NBC comedy, people were tossing about a Friends curse for movies. All of the Friends stars were getting into movies while shooting the show, and few of them were any good. In addition, after Seinfeld ended, it's four major stars couldn't or didn't do much with their careers for a while- and this was before Michael Richards's tirade. Megahits sitcoms tend to have curses labeled on them when their stars aren't doing much else with their careers, either during or after the show ends. Nowadays, one might be tempted to add The Office to that list of cursed shows, considering what The Office's stars have been doing outside of Dunder Mifflin.

Steve Carell and The Office took off at about the same time, as Carell's 40-Year-Old Virgin became a hit just in time for The Office to take off and become an Emmy winning cult hit. The next year, Carell got indie cred with Little Miss Sunshine and was officially off as a major comedy star. However, since The Office has officially made it big, Carell hasn't had as much luck with his movies. Evan Almighty flopped, Dan in Real Life didn't do much, and Get Smart didn't make many people forget the original show. Carell is still a major star, but his recent movies have not been at Virgin or Little Miss Sunshine levels of quality lately. The backlash may begin to set in for Carell if he doesn't get a true hit soon.

Carell isn't the only Office mate to struggle in the movies. The success of The Office has allowed Carell's co-stars to take off with careers of their own. However, few of them have gotten the same level of success on movie screens. Rainn Wilson became the latest one to experience that when his first star vehicle, The Rocker, bombed in late summer. Before that, Wilson had appeared in the failed films My Super Ex-Girlfriend and The Last Mimzy. Wilson did make a cameo early in the Oscar nominated hit Juno, so that would seem to break the Office curse. However, Wilson's role as a store clerk with even more weird catch phrases than Juno herself was regarded as the worst part of the movie.

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