Working Girl
★★★
It's always easy to see how certain movies could have been a bigger deal at the time of their release compared to today, especially those from the '80s. It's very easy to see how Mike Nichols's take on females holding power positions in the corporate world was different and unique at the time, but it still seems a bit out of touch with the message it's trying to convey. On one hand, it's all about female empowerment, but on the other hand, it still completely objectives its lead female characters. Yes, I know, progress has to work out some kinks along the way, but it was hard to mentally push past the fact that a group of males was trying to tell this story from a female's perspective.
This didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of Working Girl. It's a well-thought-out premise that does a good job of balancing realism with hijinks. There was an easy path to making this a slapstick workplace comedy to gain easy laughs, but everyone stays restrained and grounded in their characters. Somehow I really haven't seen Melanie Griffith in a lot of films and honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about her as a performer. I thought she fit the role well in this movie, but I never quite fell in love with her as all the other characters do in this movie.
Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver command the screen, so in that way, everyone is perfectly cast to dwarf Griffith's Tess. It was a lot of fun to see Ford cast as the romantic counterpart. At first, you can't help but wonder if he can pull it off, but by the end, you, of course, are won over. Because, he's Harrison Ford, right? Weaver also is perfect in this role as a unique villain that is always a little hard to read. You can tell that she is having a lot of fun with the role and adds some layers to her snobbery character.
Working Girl is a perfect time capsule of a struggle that permeated America's culture in the late '80s. It's fascinating to watch to see both how far we've come and how some things haven't changed at all. As a movie, I found that times it wasn't able to find its rhythm, which is surprising from Nichols. It takes a long time to get to the beats and points that it wants to address. But there are glimmers of charm throughout that have you satisfied by the end, even though the journey isn't all that surprising.
