I seriously thought I’d be ready to love this movie. It’s one of those movies that, as a movie fan, I’ve been ashamed of not having seen for so long, and for years I’ve been looking for an opportunity to finally see it. I loved the recent Little Black Book, which rips off Working Girl in many, many ways, and it was that movie that made me finally see it when it showed up on TV this Bank Holiday Monday.

Let’s cut to the chase: some people would gladly drown me for saying this, but I prefer Little Black Book. By far. Working Girl is a great, entertaining movie, and it brought the world its wonderful but overused* theme song by Carly Simon, “Let the River Run” (seriously, how can they credit her with the whole music of this movie, it’s one song with 3 phrases re-orchestrated over and over: sad scene? play it slow! happy scene? play it pop! It’s excruciating).

But it’s dated. It’s aged so badly. Melanie Griffith really sucks in the movie too. I don’t think I’ve ever said an actress truly sucked in my life… at least not recently, anyway. But Melanie Griffith pretty much ruins this movie for me. I want them to remake it with Drew Barrymore – I know that sounds dumb, but if you haven’t seen Riding in Cars with Boys then don’t judge my idea lol. Griffith’s character is about to turn 30 in the movie… well, so is Drew Barrymore right now. And she’s done a similar-ish movie, Never Been Kissed, where she fakes her ID backwards to Working Girl. Griffith even makes a few faces in this movie that made me totally think of Drew Barrymore. As for the rest of the cast for my imagined remake, I say pretty much bring everyone back, the rest of the cast are great actors now, not to say their performances couldn’t use some updating too.

It has a lot wrong with it… I know it’s considered an 80s classic but it doesn’t even touch stuff like The Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing and Cocktail and Top Gun and The Karate Kid for me. Even Joan Cusack is dull. And that’s a problem. But yes, I got goosebumps at the ending. There again, Little Black Book made me cry my eyes out. Now there’s a movie, and it didn’t overuse the song.

*I’ve decided there’s an unwritten (and unwritable – timing is so unbelievably brittle) rule on the overuse of great songs in movies – this movie probably plays the “Let the River Run” melody at least once for every scene, which is the worst offender I’ve ever known. I think of movies like Strictly Ballroom which uses Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” perfectly, using different parts and building just enough, but never using the song as much as you’d expect, and Dirty Dancing, which uses a really sad piano version of “I’ve Had The time of My Life” around midway through the movie. There’s a delicate balance to milking a great movie song, and Working Girl goes beyond too far.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 at 12:20 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.