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Title: Working Girl (1988)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Harrison Ford | ... | Jack Trainer | |
| Sigourney Weaver | ... | Katharine Parker | |
| Melanie Griffith | ... | Tess McGill | |
| Alec Baldwin | ... | Mick Dugan | |
| Joan Cusack | ... | Cyn | |
| Philip Bosco | ... | Oren Trask | |
| Nora Dunn | ... | Ginny | |
| Oliver Platt | ... | Lutz | |
 |
James Lally | ... | Turkel |
| Kevin Spacey | ... | Bob Speck | |
| Robert Easton | ... | Armbrister | |
| Olympia Dukakis | ... | Personnel Director | |
| Amy Aquino | ... | Alice Baxter | |
| Jeffrey Nordling | ... | Tim Rourke | |
|
|
Elizabeth Whitcraft | ... | Doreen DiMucci |
Tess McGill is a frustrated secretary, struggling to forge ahead in the world of big business in New York. She gets her chance when her boss breaks her leg on a skiing holiday. McGill takes advantage of her absence to push ahead with her career. She teams up with investment broker Jack Trainer to work on a big deal. The situation is complicated after the return of her boss. Written by Sami Al-Taher <staher2000@yahoo.com>
I was pretty shocked to learn, after watching this film, that Mike Nichols was the director: a lighthearted, linearly-plotted chick comedy from the man behind the absurdist Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the character-driven The Graduate, both very heavy drama indeed, is not at all what one might expect.
However, the same quality craftsmanship from the aforementioned two permeates the entirety of this deceivingly simple movie. Though Tess McGill's achievements may seem a bit far-fetched, the story works because its depiction of the New York business and finance world in which she navigates is extremely accurate. The highly sensitive maneuvering in the cutting details is played to a T. We are also treated to the insecure porcine antics of nerdy male big-name school alumni desperate to cover up for their lack of real virility or machismo, as well-as the self-conscious vacuousness of many of their female counterparts, so beautifully incarnated in Tess's boss, Katherine Parker.
Tess's plight, as well, as a frustrated woman but especially as an aging (she's 30) Bright Young Thing frustrated in her attempts to get that seal of validation for her competence and style, ring very true. It doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman: anyone who has had to work with/for Ivy League alumni without having an Ivy League degree himself, or report to someone younger or barely older than himself, as I have, will begin rooting for Tess quite swiftly.
Harrison Ford's acting doesn't particularly stand out, but it wasn't bad. It helped that Ford was given a role with some degree of substance, though Melanie Griffith clearly outshines him. The omnipresence of Katherine's energy threatening to darken Tess's work, even when Katherine is absent, is quite remarkable, and it's almost frightening how well Sigourney Weaver, herself a Yale alumna, seemed to understand the territory in which she had to play Katherine.
All-in-all, brilliant work. Two thumbs up!