Comedy Central was showing Men at Work on TV. This had a pretty short shelf-life in theaters. I remember when it was released - I was 9 years old. I remember really wanting to see it (I was fascinated by garbage men), but watching it now, I know I would have hated it.
During the early 1990s, "environmental" children's media was en vogue - Captain Planet, Toxic Crusaders, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ("mutagen" and toxic stuff), Fern Gully. At the time of its release, Men at Work would have been lumped in with movies like "Harry and the Hendersons", where environmentalism is a sub-plot.
I think Men at Work could have been more successful as a more serious movie about environmental issues and whistleblowing, but those did not really take off until the late 1990s. I think most environmental movies and whistleblowing movies tend to belong together, as the plot is generally about "man versus a system." Disaster movies are different - "man versus nature". Most of this list is okay, there's a few more disaster-ish movies:
-A Few Good Men (1992, military stuff)
-Outbreak (1995, virus)
-Waterworld (1995, climate change, I guess)
-The Rainmaker (1997, evil insurance companies)
-Two Voices (1997, drug companies and breast implants)
-A Civil Action (1998, water contamination)
-The Insider (1999, tobacco industry)
-Erin Brockovich (2000, water contamination)
-The Day After Tomorrow (2004, ageneral environmental disaster)
-The Simpsons Movie (2007, water contamination)
-The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008, general environmental disaster)
-Wall-E (2008, trash and resource-intensive consumption, I guess?)
-Quantum of Solace (2008, some scheme involving water)
There were also some earlier influential environmental and whistleblower movies: Silkwood, The China Syndrome (the latter of which is a good reason why there are not many nuclear plants in the US), and Serpico.
