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The Barefoot Executive may appear to just be a light and fluffy 1960s/1970s-style Disney comedy, and it can certainly be enjoyed that way, but you don't have to dig very far below the surface to find a subtly clever satire of the television industry with a very insider feel. Having worked in radio for a while, and having friends and family who do or did work in television, as well as reading a lot of behind the scenes books on television programs, a lot of the jabs at the industry feel spot on.The humorous premise, probably stemming from a common joke about this, is that a "monkey" (actually a chimpanzee here) could pick a television stations' programming and do just as good or even a better job at it. Screenwriter Joseph McEveety and director Robert Butler get the dynamics between various levels of employees right, including the bigwigs. There are nice, continuing threads of intertwined sycophancy, insular ideas, fears of getting canned or demoted over ratings or general incompetence, and self-righteous assertiveness. Some of those things may be contradictory, but nevertheless they're representative of life within the walls of a broadcast media outlet--and probably many other places of employment as well. To an extent, the personal dynamics aspects of The Barefoot Executive are suggestive of an early version of Office Space (1999). But towards the end of the film, The Barefoot Executive nicely diverges into slightly more absurdist territory.Raffles, the chimpanzee, is charismatic and impressive. But an unexpected surprise was the scope and chemistry of the cast, which includes veteran character actors and Disney regulars Joe Flynn and Harry Morgan, veteran television actor Wally Cox, the woman who has supplied the voice of Daphne in most of the Scooby-Doo series and animated films since 1970, Heather North, and in one of his first films, John Ritter. Ritter is on fire here. He steals almost every one of his scenes. And that's quite a feat seeing that the star is an engaging Kurt Russell, who had already made a string of very successful films for Disney.
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