Una donna in carriera

This is a fabulous movie. Maybe not rocket science, but clever enough! It has an engaging plot, an extremely empathetic heroine, a villainous boss, a cheatin' boyfriend, and a handsome new love interest just stepping into the picture. Get your popcorn ready for the comeuppance story of a lifetime.

The tale revolves around a smart secretary named Tess McGill, who wants to get ahead in the Big Apple but is beaten down by her nasty boss, Katherine, who steals her ideas and passes them off as her own. Fortune smiles on Tess when Katherine breaks her leg during a skiing holiday and Tess is able to 'take charge'...that is, until her boss, who recovers all too quickly, returns. Of course there is also a romance brewing here in the form of a handsome investment banker named Jack Trainer, who just happens to be her boss's boyfriend.

Harrison Ford is his typical dashing, magnetic self in the role of Jack Trainer, but it is the two ladies that make this movie. Signourey Weaver is absolutely villainous as an employee's 'worst nightmare' boss, a lady (no, not a lady) high up the corporate ladder, but lacking any semblance of integrity or kindness toward anyone below her in that ladder. You will be itching to see this nasty snob get her comeuppance.

Above all, Melanie Griffith is brilliant in the role of Tess, every viewer's favorite downtrodden secretary. She's a woman with all the intelligence and skills needed to succeed in the corporate world, but is ill used by those above her who put her down. Many employees out there will identify with Tess, having at some point in their lives been ill treated by a boss, whether male or female, with at least shades of Katherine. Furthermore, Tess will surely gain viewer sympathy regarding her unfortunate experiences with her sleazy live in lover, Mick.

The scene featuring the Staten Island ferry is beautifully done, accompanied as it is by Carly Simon's wonderful Oscar winning song, 'Let the River Run'. What an amazing voice! This is really a fantastic, fun movie. You can't help but love it.

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.

A pure fantasy served up by Mike Nichols, but a vastly entertaining one.

Melanie Griffith is the secretary with massive hair who pretends to be a corporate business woman when her boss is layed up with a broken leg. The catch is, she finds out she's pretty good at it, and things get complicated when she ends up spearheading a business deal and falling in love with her key partner (Harrison Ford), all the while trying to keep what she's doing from her boss (Sigourney Weaver). It's the kind of movie that could just as easily have been made as a screwball comedy in the 1940s, perhaps with Barbara Stanwyck in the lead role.

The film is a classic in its own small way, one of the best comedies to emerge from the 1980s. Griffith is matched well with her role, so her limitations as an actress don't draw too much attention to themselves. But it's Weaver who steals the show as Griffith's imperious boss. She's a riot as a confident and powerful career woman from hell. And Joan Cusack steals a few scenes of her own as Griffith's best friend and fellow secretary, who sports hair as big as Griffith's and a Joisy accent to boot.

Nichols knows how to direct a comedy so that the funny bits speak for themselves.

Grade: A

Watching Working Girl ten years after its release, it's hard not to dismiss it as a dated satire of the corporate world of the 1980's. At the same time, that's part of the movie's charm. Even though ten years has made the costumes, hair, and production design irritating, the charm and intelligence of Mike Nichols' Cinderella story still shine through. As does the quality of the performances, which are also revealing a decade later. Harrison Ford makes a perfectly likable romantic lead while Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey offer amusingly smarmy comic performances. But the actresses walk away with the movie. Joan Cusack is hilarious in a scene-stealing turn as a Staten Island secretary, and Sigourney Weaver is great as a shrewd and conniving career woman. The brilliance of Weaver's performance is how slyly and genuinely she plays her villianous character, often decieving the audience as she decieves the characters in the movie. And finally there is Melanie Griffith who gave a star-is-born performance as the big-haired secretary who falls in love with Ford's merger specialist and smartly climbs her way up the corporate ladder after Weaver stabs her in the back. Griffith earned an Oscar nod for this performance (as did Cusack and Weaver for theirs) and it's a testament to how funny, sexy, and wonderful she is in the part that even after numerous flops and odd career moves, she's still a well-known movie star ten years later (For an opposite side at this scenario look at Jennifer Beals in Flashdance or Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing, both of whom became big stars and then fell off the face of the earth). Nichols' direction is smart, as is Kevin Wade's clever screenplay, and the light and funny romantic comedy leads up to a surprisingly suspenseful and enormously satisfying climax. All-in-all, a satisfying and amusing entertainment.

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.