Working Girl (1988)
Directed by Mike Nichols
When a secretary's idea is stolen by her boss, she takes a risky chance to reclaim it by impersonating him and running the project from his position.
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What critics compared Working Girl to
Then there’s the standard makeover theme you’ll remember from Working Girl, Miss Congeniality, or another Kohn-Silverstein project, Never Been Kissed.
The film takes a cue from “Working Girl,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and other Manhattan-set corporate fables.
As she inspires others around her, the movie winds up hitting a rousing home run that recalls the classic Melanie Griffith comedy “Working Girl” and even feels akin to being a “Rocky” for women.
The script acknowledges its roots in the comic subgenre of bodily transformation (at one point, Renee watches "Big"), and its executive-suite drama plays like a thinner, blander version of "Working Girl," "The Devil Wears Prada" and other satires of Manhattan upward mobility.
It’s lovely that Kelsey gets the requisite ferry scene, briefly linking “The King of Staten Island” to a cinematic tradition that includes Martin Scorsese’s “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” and Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl.”
Just as Freak and Geeks was also a betrayal of American working-class roots, these bridge-and-tunnel adult tough guys and blunt, gum-smacking women (“we’re the only place New Jersey looks down on”) recall the outrageous white stereotypes of big-haired Staten Island skanks in Mike Nichols’s phony Working Girl .
He lives with his mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and refuses to commit to the local girl he’s sleeping with (Bel Powley, channeling “Working Girl”-style Staten Island swagger).
In her sheer black panty hose, the kind women haven't worn onscreen since her mother Melanie Griffith starred in Working Girl , she did look born to play the part.
The movie itself invites these comparisons, when it has Johnson’s character Anastasia Steele, the virginal heroine of the Fifty Shades franchise who is inducted into an education in sexual bondage at the hands of Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), pay homage to Working Girl after winning a sudden promotion.
27. There’s a little homage to Johnson’s mom, Melanie Griffith, and her signature movie, Working Girl.
One of the more delightfully absurd flourishes finds Anastasia abruptly promoted to publishing executive and Johnson responds by reciting one of her mom Melanie Griffith’s monologues from Working Girl .
It’s almost eerie how much she reminds you of her mother, Melanie Griffith, especially given the similarities between “Fifty Shades” and “Working Girl,” which was also about a mousy woman learning to assert herself in the company of a stinking-rich suitor.
What’s nice about the negotiation scene is how much Johnson evokes Griffith creating her own angles in Working Girl, in which Griffith’s screwball-dingbat delivery belied great reserves of self-confidence.
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It’s a great role for Hathaway, reminiscent of memorable breakouts like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl.”
“The Devil Wears Prada” might not be much more that a clever riff on “All About Eve,” but thanks to Streep it’s sharp and witty enough to play on a double bill with that 1950 classic and not completely fold in its presence; it’s probably the best Hollywood working-girl comedy since, well, Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl” (1988).
Yet without a single tolerable protagonist or amusingly malicious one-liner – as well as a hypocritical desire to celebrate the hideous Miranda while supposedly condemning her – The Devil Wears Prada primarily makes one pine for any comparable ‘50s working-girl comedy (or, for that matter, 1988’s Working Girl ).
Think of Sigourney Weaver's scheming Katherine Parker in Working Girl: She's such a fiend that no matter what you think of Melanie Griffith's Tess, you root for her.
A blond graduate of Brown in the book, young go-getter Andrea Sachs is now a lanky brunette from Northwestern when luck (mostly good) shoves her into the feng shui/white-on-white corner office of Runway editor Miranda Priestly, here silver-haired and played by Meryl Streep as a cross between Cruella de Vil and the whipcracking sadist essayed by Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl .
Two decades ago we had the story of Working Girl , in which an overworked, underappreciated underling got the respect she deserved as she took down a scheming, nasty boss.
(We hope the Working Girl namecheck is an intentional nod to Harrison Ford.)
But the pile-ups, shoot-outs, and cast of loudmouthed hicks left me with the sinking feeling that the film’s true object of affection isn’t science fiction but “Cannonball Run.’’ Hiring Weaver to play the movie’s monochromatically nasty villain suggests the filmmakers know she starred in “Aliens’’ but preferred her in “Working Girl.’’
Most other actresses would have played Karen as a glacially formidable "bitch," akin to the Gina Gershon role in The Insider or the Sigourney Weaver part in Working Girl (minus, obviously, the farcical accents).
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I am not entirely sure what most people might have rightly expected to get from a film offering the origin story of Cruella DeVil but I am reasonably sure that a half-assed combination of “Working Girl,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and a watered-down take on “Joker” would not have been high on most lists.
I struggle to think of a female equivalent of such a film, because women who are abusive in their power are most often movie villains (Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl , Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada ), where men get to be complicated anti-heroes ( There Will Be Blood, Jobs, The Social Network ).