For anyone who's ever won. For anyone who's ever lost. And for everyone who's still in there trying.
1988-12-20
$28.0M
114 min
Tess McGill is an ambitious secretary with a unique approach for climbing the ladder to success. When her classy, but villainous boss breaks a leg skiing, Tess takes over her office, her apartment and even her wardrobe. She creates a deal with a handsome investment banker that will either take her to the top, or finish her off for good.
Right from the opening bars of Carly Simon's catchy theme tune and the young girls with huge hair on the ferry - I thought this was going to be entertaining. By and large, it is. "Tess" (Melanie Griffith) is fed up working for bosses who just want to sleep with her, so thinks perhaps things will change the she starts working for "Katherine" (Sigourney Weaver). Always open to ideas, this woman gets hold of one of her assistant's ideas and when she injures herself skiing, "Tess" discovers her boss's duplicity and decides to run with her idea herself - involving "Jack" (Harrison Ford) along the way. Turns out this idea has legs - and multi-million dollar ones at that - but as the two begin to mix business and pleasure - we discover that "Jack" has his secrets to keep too! The pace is generally quite good, the characters have plenty to like about them and the film builds nicely to an enjoyable and fitting conclusion. Griffith is on good form here, she has a spirit and charisma that can't help but raise a bit of a smile. Sarandon and Ford both support well, too with the latter content to take more of a charming but back seat role. Alec Baldwin features sparingly as her creep of a boyfriend, and I could have sworn I saw "Cyn" (Joan Cusack) in Culture Club or Dead or Alive! It's maybe a little bit long, but as feel-good films go, this has a decent script, plenty of chemistry and a vindication that worked for me.
"Working Girl" is a wonderful film and it achieves an admirable level of entertainment value. The romance truly works and the comedy is genuinely funny and it should come as no surprise to anyone it did incredibly healthy business at the global box office. One of the most memorable elements of this film is the unflinching way the character of Tess McGill has been deliberately used to make some valid and important comments about big business and how particular individuals might be perceived in relation to the way they dress or look or act. The so called elite in any walk of life will always look down on and summarily dismiss certain people regardless of their abilities or the contributions they might make in much the same way as some men look down on and belittle women. Anyway, it is refreshing to watch a film which tells us this doesn't necessarily have to be the case and no one should have to silently tolerate it either professionally or domestically.
