Working Girl

I feel the same way when I watch Working Girl as I did when I visited Amsterdam: both awed and at-home. The women in Amsterdam are tall, substantial and fashion risk-takers. The same can be said about the women in Working Girl. Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, and Joan Cusack are all over 5'9" (don't question this...I google-researched this and imdb'ed it...do not question my investigative skills). That plethora of statuesque women is only one of the reasons why I totally love this movie.

Working Girl is 1980s in the best/worst sense of that decade. The girlfriends (Griffith and Cusack) are secretaries who take the Staten Island ferry every day into the Big Apple. They have really big hair, wear shoulder pads and white sneakers with their black hose before they reach the office. (I am horrified and delighted to report that women still sport the white running shoes with office wear in the streets of Manhattan.) Tess (Melanie Griffith) finds herself as the secretary of a new executive, Katherine Parker (played by Sigourney Weaver). She tells Tess to come to her with ideas, and Tess does. When Katherine goes on vacation, Tess finds out that Katherine has been stealing her ideas because Tess, after all, has a "head for business and a bod for sin." That last is debateable, but Griffith does look and act the best she ever has in her career. I love her in this movie. That "little girl" voice miraculously works here and she is the most appealing I've ever seen her.

Anyway, Tess, to be taken seriously, cuts off her hair and wears all of Katherine's clothes. No one in the office seems to notice that she's in her boss's office wearing her boss's business suits. The plot is totally confusing with tons of holes I've never been able to fill in even after watching this movie at least 50 times. Tess puts together a deal involving radio and a sexy Harrison Ford. Don't worry about the confusing details of the plot; you'll get the gyst of it. Like I said, the best parts of this movie are the bad 80s fashions (including a hideously good bridesmaid dress), the frizzy hair Melanie Griffith gets from serving Dim Sum, and the incredible music. Carly Simon won an award for the theme song that sort of plays throughout. It gets totally blown out at the end and even thinking about the song gives me goosebumps. It's that good.

Working Girl is just another one of those movies that I love to watch. I just love watching Melanie Griffith and the others. They're so tall and long and tough and sexy. Don't get me wrong: the women are totally pitted against each other. Katherine is the colossal bitch who keeps a fellow woman down. That's not easy for me to swallow. But, the secretaries keep a tight tribe, and I appreciate that. The men, for their part, are represented as both saints and jerks. (A thin Alec Baldwin is hot in a gross, no shirt, sexy sort of way, and Ford is that aw-shucks, hot, open kind of guy that you'll totally want to get it on with.) Sexy. Workaholics. Mean. Studly. Need I say more?