Working Girl

This is an example of how to make fun and interesting characters that you can empathize with. It's something that today's entertainment industry has mostly forgotten about.

The film is fun, and the cast is not bad. Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford are a great combination. This is a true product of its time and as such is superior to most of today's films.

From the beginning, you sympathize with Tess McGill because the character is well written and not irritating, and the story is well balanced, with different characters, good and bad and those in between.

Sigourney Weaver is excellent in the role of the villain, and Melanie Griffith is great as Tess McGill, a secretary who wants to succeed in the business world.

In this film, not all women are saints, but women of flesh and blood, with their flaws and with whom you can sympathize, and men are the same, different, some are bad some are good, just like in real life.

An interesting and fun story with a good cast.

Because there's so much content out there and I'll never get through everything I want to see in my lifetime, to help me decide, I often segue from one actor, director, or theme to another. Mike Nichols was the bridge this past weekend for Super Saturday Cinema since I watched "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" recently and have seen "Closer", "Charlie Wilson's War", and "Postcards from the Edge" in the past few years.

. This is a movie of its time, still entertaining but also allowing for a bit of anthropological thinking about the 80s. There are many good elements that have survived the test of time (35 years!), including an excellent cast, a good story, a great director, and omigod, the hair! If anyone wonders whether women really wore their hair like that, they only need to look at my 1988 high dchool yearbook where every senior girl worth her salt had her hair Aqua-Netted to the gods.

Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a smart, plucky, investment worker. She tries to climb the corporate ladder, but she's constantly held back by the sexist environment, and her night school college degree. When she is assigned to be Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver)'s secretary, she hoped that things would finally change. She shares a business idea with Katharine. When she finds that Katharine is claiming the idea for herself, Tess takes matters into her own hands.

The subject matter, the style, and the humor is pure 80's. The hair is insane. And there is no accounting for the fashion. It is jaw dropping and unintentionally funny.

As for the story, it's a fairly good happy rom-com from veteran director Mike Nichols. This is possibly Melanie Griffith's best work. She has just enough pluckiness and is a complete sweetheart. Sigourney Weaver is showing her comedic chops. And Harrison Ford is actually a great rom-com leading man.

"Working Girl" is one of those movies I've put off for years; and I guess it's partly because I'd known it as a romantic comedy, but mostly because I've never been a Melanie Griffith fan.

Turns out she's the movie's best feature, fitting well as an ambitious secretary who can't get ahead, someone who takes the corporate ladder by force. Actually, all three of the stars were ideal, but Ford and Weaver seemed to be supporting Griffith. She just seemed to embody that empowered career woman who sheds her mousy constraints.

And it is a romantic comedy, but a subtle one. The humor is expressed in the dialogue and I found myself laughing more than I'd expected. It's an '80s movie down to its very DNA and pretty much everything about it still holds up.

7/10

Wonderful romance-comedy in the tradition of Capra and Sturges with Griffith perfectly cast as a woman posing as a business mogul to get ahead in the corporate world and spite bitchy boss Weaver, who is simply divine. Ford is especially precious in a rare romantic-comedy as Griffith's partner in business and love interest. The story is creative and witty. Mike Nichols' direction is sharp and in the highest form. The fine supporting cast also features Cusack and the always durable Phillip Bosco. Carly Simon's wonderful song won an Oscar.