Movie #86 - Working Girl

"For anyone who's ever won. For anyone who's ever lost. And for everyone who's still in there trying."

1988 must have been a slow year for movies... after doing some research on this quirky film, it seems that a number of Oscar nominations were given to the cast and film credits associated to this movie. Although it is a funny film from the 80's, there really isn't a reason as to why so many nominations were provided.

This film does mark one of the best performances in the long career of Melanie Griffith (pre-plastic surgery of course). If you want her best performance, seek out the WWII time piece Shining Through opposite Michael Douglas.

There are good points to this film - Sigourney Weaver plays the villain and she does it well. In fact, when you look back at the 80's, Sigourney dominated a number of key films of that era - the Alien franchise, the Ghostbusters franchise, and a number of romantic comedies such as this movie. This also marks one of those Harrison Ford films that I didn't add to my collection - he's not playing his standard Ford role of being a lawyer/doctor/analyst turned action star, so this film gets relegated to the second tier in his many roles.

However, the biggest selling point of this film is following the life of the character of Tess McGill. Since this movie was filmed in the heart of the 80's, the ability of women to advance in the shark-friendly corporate world of New York City is a rarity and its entertaining to see how she does it. Throw in a good soundtrack and some cameos from Alec Baldwin (the greatest actor of all time), Joan Cusack, and Kevin Spacey - and you got a pretty good 80's film.

I am glad to learn that neither Weaver, Cusack, or Griffith won an Oscar for this film, however, Griffith did in fact win a Golden Globe consolation statue instead. Hey - even the Globes make mistakes from time to time - look at Paul Hogan winning for Crocodile Dundee or Tom Cruise winning three times for Magnolia, Jerry Macguire, and Born on the Fourth of July.