Movie Review: Aloha (2015)

A romantic comedy with convoluted but irrelevant sub-plots, Aloha never shakes the impression that a bunch of actors took a dream vacation and cobbled together a platitudinous project to write-off the expenses.

Army veteran and now private contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hawaii to negotiate a land access agreement with a native chief. Brian is working for tycoon Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who is operating a satellite business with murky ties to the military. Air Force Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone) is Brian's liaison, and he also reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams), now married to man-of-few-words Major John "Woody" Woodside (John Krasinsky).

The land negotiations go reasonably well, with Allison (who is one quarter Hawaiian) entranced by the natives' spiritual connection to the sky, whereas Brian remains more grounded. Allison's all-business facade starts to melt in the presence of Brian's charisma, but he is more intrigued by the potential of rekindling the passion with Tracy. But when the real cargo of Carson's latest satellite project is revealed, Brian has to decide where his loyalties lie.

A lacklustre outing by writer and director Cameron Crowe, Aloha meanders in and out of several storylines with no conviction. Riding on the laid-back star power of Cooper, Stone, McAdams, Murray plus Alec Baldwin in a glorified cameo, the plot has traces of romantic comedy, a barely-there side-story about evil corporations desecrating the sanctity of the land, and an overly familiar damaged and cynical man making half-hearted attempts to right past wrongs.

The talented cast and decent island scenery offer some enjoyment, and to give Crowe his due, he pulls out a final father-daughter scene that belongs in another, much better movie. But the rest of the narrative never justifies itself as a story that needed to be told. The script lacks wit and edge, and gets worse at it goes along, choking on cliches of women falling for a flawed man they want to fix in between unconvincing debates about spirituality and pragmatism. By the time a kid's photograph reveals a weapons secret and one guy with a laptop reprograms a satellite on the fly, all credibility is lost.

The big familial reveal is telegraphed in the opening five minutes and comes as no surprise among all the other no surprises. It is left to John Krasinski to try and salvage a few moments of humour as a stoic husband who says plenty by not talking. He's a man who knows who he is, whereas Aloha suffers from  both an identity crisis and impostor syndrome.



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Movie Review: Caddyshack (1980)

A comedy set at an exclusive golf club, Caddyshack overflows with often hilarious characters and events. Despite the absence of structure and plot, most of the jokes find their target.

Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) is a caddy at the members-only Bushwood Country Club. The members include laidback businessman Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), an expert golfer who plays for fun, and the much more competitive and highly strung Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight). Slightly unhinged assistant groundskeeper Carl (Bill Murray) is tasked with eliminating a gopher burrowing under the golf course.

Danny is desperate to secure a college scholarship and tries to cozy up to members for financial help. The arrival of loud and brash businessman Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield) infuriates the Judge, setting the two men on a collision course. Meanwhile the Judge's niece Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan) showers sexual sparks all over the golf course.

A series of sketches only loosely tied together, Caddyshack has no cohesive story to speak of. The origins of the script, co-written by Brian Doyle-Murray and director Harold Ramis, may have been to focus on the misadventures of horny caddies drawn from their own experiences. But by the time the editing and improvisation was done, the film became an uproarious hodge podge of skits, poking fun at the haughty culture and diverse personalities populating a typical country club.

The confluence of comic talent featuring Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, each adhering to his own style, is a lightning-in-a-bottle cinematic event. They bulldoze through the movie almost oblivious to each other, which only adds to the throw-stuff-at-the-wall attitude.

Murray spends the film dreaming up increasingly destructive methods to eliminate one gopher. Chase is coolness personified until his game cracks under pressure. Dangerfield's mouth, clothes and equipment are loud enough to threaten the club's entire existence. With able support from Ted Knight and Michael O'Keefe, their scenes of dialogue are often made-up but also inspired, talent let loose on the greens.

The highlights are many, including the classic chocolate bar in a swimming pool, Al's introductory stream of taunts immediately throwing the Judge off his game, and Carl resorting to questionable military tactics to solve his problem once and for all. Snippets of life as a caddy do make into the movie, including hauling oversized equipment and escorting doddering seniors around the course. Meanwhile Lacey just wants to have fun, undermining all of Danny's good work in sidling up to her uncle to secure his scholarship.

As can be expected some sequences just don't work, including a carnage-on-the-water yacht demolition derby. But overall Caddyshack lustily yells "fore!" and claims a deserved birdie.

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Movie Review: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

A comedy about family and dashed dreams, The Royal Tenenbaums introduces plenty of peculiar characters but drowns them in uninspiring incompetence.

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) separates from his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston), shocking their three young kids Chas, Richie and the adopted Margot. Each of the children possesses genius talent: Chas in business, Richie in tennis and Margot in writing. Meanwhile, Richie's best friend Eli spends all his hours with the Tenenbaums.

Twenty two years later a financially broke but still upbeat Royal learns that Etheline may be falling in love with her accountant Henry (Danny Glover), and reappears at the family home to try and win back her love and make amends with the children.

The now-grown kids are not doing so well. Richie (Luke Wilson) is a has-been tennis prodigy after suffering an on-court meltdown during a competitive match; Chas (Ben Stiller) has become paranoid after losing his wife in a fire, and the still morose Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is stuck in a miserable marriage with Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray), and having an affair with Eli (Owen Wilson).

Directed by Wes Anderson and exquisitely photographed by Robert Yeoman, The Royal Tenenbaums features character quantity and compositional splendour but not narrative quality. While the film exhibits all the typical Anderson quirkiness, the various plot threads never weave together, and the story idles rather than thrives.

The opening is promising, and the emerging potential of genius kids offers no shortage of possibilities. But after the time jump the children emerge as adults who never blossomed, and The Royal Tenenbaums has nowhere to go. Despite a game cast there is limited enjoyment to be found in watching multiple wasted lives weighed down by the luggage of broken hearts, decades-long grudges, neglect and unmet expectations, but this is where the film resides, and no amount of attempted dry humour can save it.

The script lacks a cutting edge, the dialogue is listless, and the characters range from boring to irritating, with none likeable. Attempts to inject some drama and humour include two men (other than her husband) in love with Margot, a suicide attempt, and a brief Benny Hill-style madcap chase. None succeed in enlivening proceedings.

The cast members pose rather than act, in typical Anderson fashion precise symmetrical scene composition more important than individual showiness. The Royal Tenenbaums is always intriguing to look at, but more as a series of paintings than an engaging movie.

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Movie Review: Rock The Kasbah (2015)

A muddled drama comedy, Rock The Kasbah cannot decide what it is and defaults to a series of abandoned plot fragments.

Los Angeles-based washed-up talent producer Richie Lanz (Bill Murray) claims to have discovered Madonna, among many other wild tales. Now he is reduced to living in motel room, his only client the willing but hapless singer Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel), who also doubles as his assistant and suffers from unmanageable stagefright. Desperate and cashless Richie accepts an offer to take Ronnie on tour to war-torn Afghanistan, where the military money is flowing and US troops crave any entertainment.

Once there, Richie and Ronnie are immediately exposed to the horrors of war. He tangles with military contractor Bombay Brian (Bruce Willis), rogue gun runners and local tribesmen, and creates a business alliance with American prostitute Merci (Kate Hudson). Richie then stumbles on the magical voice of local woman Salima (Leem Lubany) and immediately recognizes a star-in-waiting, but Afghanistan's culture may not be ready for a female entertainer.

Directed by Barry Levinson and written by Mitch Glazer, Rock The Kasbah is loosely inspired by the true story of Setara Hussainzada, who appeared on Afghan Star, a local version of American Idol. The problem is that Salima is a non-entity in the film, appearing late and then barely featuring as a character other than as the stereotypical subjugated woman in a male-dominated culture.

On the way to Salima's story Rock The Kasbah ambles along rather aimlessly, pinballing from Richie's career decline, to Ronnie's never-gonna-make-it stage antics, to encounters with fast and loose gun runners, then the mandatory working girl Merci padding her retirement account by servicing the troops, and plenty of predictable interactions with tribesmen in the desert. None of these sub-plots go anywhere, and when Salima finally enters the story, her narrative is just as tired, predictable and unsatisfying.

There is an unseemly level of throw-everything-at-the-screen desperation to the script, peaking with Richie landing in the middle of an inter-tribal coup with a bewilderingly botched climax. Stymied in his search for any cohesion, Levinson rushes the ending and leaves all the threads loose, the film packing up and leaving all the characters wondering where to go next.

Bill Murray delivers his now overly familiar older-man-out-of-place schtick, enough to rustle up some laughs and hold the center of the movie together but here buffeted by an overabundance of cultural clichés. Rock The Kasbah rolls downhill on a wayward path to insignificance.

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Movie Review: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

An artistic coming-of-age story, Moonrise Kingdom takes a quirky look at young love between two troubled adolescents. The film is a visual delight, and the story includes layers of sharp social commentary.

It's 1965, on a fictional island in New England. Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton) leads a troop of 12 year olds at a summer camp. One morning, Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman), an orphan and the least popular member of the scout team, goes missing, leaving a polite note behind. Police Captain Duffy Sharp (Bruce Willis) starts a search, and soon discovers that Suzy Bishop, the troubled daughter of Walt (Bill Murray) and Laura (Frances McDormand), is also missing. A year earlier Sam and Suzy met and bonded during a school play performance, and eventually they planned an escape adventure.

Once they learn of the escape, Sam's foster parents immediately disavow him and announce that he is not welcome back at their house. Meanwhile, out in the wilderness Sam uses his scouting skills as he and Suzy hike to a secluded cove, where they set up camp and tentatively start to get intimate. The search intensifies with Ward, his scouts, Sharp and the Bishops frantically trying to find the children, with matters complicated by a relationship between Laura Bishop and the police captain. A representative of Social Services (Tilda Swinton) flies in to help. Sam and Suzy enjoy a few moments of idyllic isolation, but there are surprises and complications ahead, including a mammoth storm.

Directed and co-written by Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom is a fresh take on young and emerging love. With exquisite use of staging, colour and symmetry, Anderson creates a fictional yet potentially real world where the setting is as important as the characters, and the almost magical surroundings contribute to the sense that all is indeed possible. The film thrives on a sense of whimsy as seen through a storytelling lens, and builds to a frantic, blustery finale.

The central characters of Sam and Suzy share the experience of troubled households and loneliness bordering on depression. While keeping the film light, Anderson does not shy away from hinting at the violent tendencies that troubled children are capable of: both Sam and Suzy can and do take care of themselves when needed.

But more sharply, Moonrise Kingdom is about adults contributing to the trauma of children needing something different. Suzy's parents come off worst, seemingly wholly incapable of connecting with their daughter. Meanwhile Sam is suffering through the bullying and ostracizing that comes with being an orphan, and exhibits both the anger and resourcefulness needed to survive in a hostile world. Suzy is so miserable she confides in Sam that she wishes she was an orphan. Pointedly, he responds that he loves her but she doesn't know what she is talking about.

Placing sensual affection at the emotional centre of an idyllically framed, fairytale-like story is mildly startling and adds to the film's uniqueness. The scenes of budding intimacy between the two 12 years old are handled with sensitivity but also honesty, Anderson confronting the reality that two troubled kids are likely to start a journey of sexual exploration sooner than most.

The performances from Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are touching, and they confront the material with admirable sincerity. They also benefit from a script that allows their characters to be children while yearning to break free of their childhood traumas. For her great escape adventure, Suzy takes along her cat, mounds of cat food, a battery-operated record player, vinyl records and three heavy hardcover books: not exactly items to facilitate a fleet-footed getaway, but fully consistent with what a child would think of.

The adults stick to their assigned supporting roles, with each of Willis, Murray, McDormand and Norton getting limited screen time but also key moments to advance the plot and sketch in Suzy and Sam's background stories.

Poignant and charming, Moonrise Kingdom beams an elegant light over the universal yet intensely personal adventure of childhood graduation.

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Movie Review: Wild Things (1998)

A neo-noir with an abundance of style and seduction, Wild Things saturates the screen with back-stabbing characters up to absolutely no good, although the fun goes somewhat off the rails in the final third.

In the posh Miami community of Blue Bay, hunky high school counsellor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) is fending off the advances of cheerleader Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards). Sam used to be the lover of Kelly's mother Sandra (Theresa Russell), one of Blue Bay's richest women. Meanwhile, Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) is a white trash teenager from the wrong side of the tracks, holding a deep grudge against Sergeant Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) of the local police force. Suzie holds Ray responsible for the shooting death of a friend. Whenever he can, Sam tries to help Suzie, who is held in contempt by Kelly.

Blue Bay is rocked when Kelly accuses Sam of rape. Sandra hires high-priced attorney Tom Baxter (Robert Wagner) to seek justice for her daughter, while a shocked Sam can only afford cut-rate lawyer Ken Bowden (Bill Murray) to represent him. The case makes headlines, and takes a sensational turn when Suzie comes forward to claim that she too was raped by Sam. With his prospects looking grim, Sam's fate is in the uncertain hands of the less than trustworthy Ken.

The synopsis covers barely half the film. Once Ken starts to interrogate Suzie, the revelations cause outright pandemonium, and the courtroom twist is only the first of many to come. Wild Things has plenty of secrets waiting to bust out, as the characters carry many hidden motivations and brutal scores to settle. This is a small film with a big agenda, drawing on the rich noir legacy to bring forward a convoluted story of seduction, big money, betrayal, revenge and class warfare in the Miami heat.

Wild Things is filmed in vivid colours, accompanied by a siren call of a George S. Clinton music score, dripping with the dangerous sensuality of the Florida swamps. And for the most part, director John McNaughton steers the film with silky smoothness, introducing the many characters and focusing on the pervasive lust in a community with too much money and too much time dedicated to rapacious pursuits.

Wild Things' appeal is in updating most of the noir elements into a hyper-driven modern context. The schemers are younger, the money bigger, the scandal more sensational, and the sex more intense, particularly a legendary threesome that provides an exclamation mark next to the film's crowning revelation. But the film also forges ahead with a plot that while comprehensible, just pushes for too many convolutions. Once the twists start coming, they never stop, and with a new reveal every few minutes as the film enters its final half an hour, the surprises lose their edge.

The cast is outstanding in depth and execution. The roles are almost all played straight, with Richards and Russell providing gallons of fervor, Campbell contributing dark broodiness, while Dillon and Bacon (who also served as executive producer) play the men who don't quite know how little control they have. Murray is a riot as a crooked lawyer in unkempt suits, with the twinkle in his eye suggesting that the ruffled persona may just be a camouflage for a sharper than expected mind. Where the wild things roam, nothing is as it seems.

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Movie Review: St. Vincent (2014)

A dramedy about an older man and a young boy helping each other to navigate life's tough patches, St. Vincent is sweet, satisfying and utterly predictable.

Vincent (Bill Murray) lives in a derelict house and drives a wreck of a car. He is unemployed, penniless, and a slob. His main activities include frequenting the local watering hole, frolicking with pregnant stripper Daka (Naomi Watts), and losing whatever money he scrounges at the racetrack. Single mom Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) moves into the house next door with her 12 year old son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). Maggie's job as a hospital technologist means long hours away from home, and she pleads with Vincent to babysit Oliver after school.

Desperate for money, he agrees against his better judgement. Vincent helps Oliver to deal with school bullies and introduces him to the strip club and the horse races. The two gradually establish a bond, Vincent rediscovering what responsibility for another person means, and Oliver growing up and unearthing the surprisingly real person behind the thick crust of Vincent's facade. But money and health problems will catch up with Vincent, threatening his burgeoning relationship with the new neighbours.

A character study full of pathos and humour, St. Vincent is all about Bill Murray's performance. He is the singular driving force behind the film, and gives it a full heart and earthy soul worth discovering. Murray provides Vincent with a sad veneer, a man seemingly resigned to live out the rest of his days in squalor while avoiding loan sharks and any meaningful contact with other human beings. But he always hints that he is hiding something more, a warmth still emanating deep within, just waiting to be tenderly exposed.

Oliver is the catalyst, and unfortunately for the movie, once the story reveals its direction it is as predictable as they come. Man helps boy become a man, boy helps man rediscover a passion for life, and both are reminded that every individual is worth celebrating. Director and screenwriter Theodore Melfi delivers it all with simplicity, some comedy and plenty of affection, and wisely limits the running time to just over 100 minutes, but St. Vincent offers little to genuinely stimulate the memory.

Melissa McCarthy is mercifully restrained, finally able to be funny without slipping into an overboard persona. Naomi Watts proves her range with the latest screen incarnation of a whore/stripper with a heart of gold, this time with the eccentric twist of also being very pregnant. She gradually starts stealing every scene she's in as the movie progresses, as Daka and Oliver reach the instinctive and unspoken understanding that they are both good for Vincent.

Murray has matured into a grizzled comedy veteran, his caustic style now suited to questioning what the world is coming to and pining for quieter, less complicated days. St. Vincent is a perfectly suitable role, but also an undemanding movie.

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Movie Review: Broken Flowers (2005)

A contemplative drama about lessons in life from lovers of the past, Broken Flowers enjoys an entrancing premise and a serenely tormented Bill Murray performance.

Don Johnston (Murray) is a rich but lonely man, having made his money in the computer industry. On the same morning that his latest girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) dumps him, Don receives an unsigned letter from a woman claiming to have been his lover about 20 years ago. She wants to let Don know that she was pregnant when they broke up, and that Don has a 19 year old son who may be now looking for him.

Next door neighbour Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an amateur detective of sorts, convinces Don to head out on a trip to connect with four former lovers who may have written the letter.  Reluctantly Don agrees, and sequentially reconnects with widowed free spirit Laura (Sharon Stone), married real estate agent Dora (Frances Conroy), animal communicator Carmen (Jessica Lange), and trailer park trash Penny (Tilda Swinton). One of them may be the mother of the son he has never known, but finding out the truth will not be easy.

Directed by Jim Jarmusch with a subtle mix of pathos and humour, Broken Flowers is a wistful look at the what-may-have-beens of life. The film is an astute examination of emotional yearning through a journey to the actual present of the idyllic past. Well written with a hefty dose of sardonic realism, Broken Flowers may occasionally try a bit too hard to be an artistic amalgamation of Lost In Translation's curious style and Groundhog Day's riff on middle aged angst, but overall Jarmusch creates his own attractive life mystery tickling for a resolution.

Don knows that he has deprived himself of something better than a very empty house. What he finds on his trip are four contrasting alternate lives occupied by four women he once loved. Laura has not lost the spark of youth, despite losing a car racer husband in a fiery crash. Laura's daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena) is doing everything possible to live up to her name in an interlude that reminds Don how old and lonely he is. Never mind his son; he could have had a daughter old enough to seduce men his age by now.

Dora is stiff, miserable, and married to Ron (Christopher McDonald), and the one woman who may still be harbouring feelings for Don. Dora has transformed from a carefree hippie teenager to a soulless adult salesperson, and Don reminds her of a life before conformance. Carmen has not sold out, but has instead veered into the pseudo new age crap of animal communication, and likely a lesbian relationship with her receptionist (Chloë Sevigny). Carmen rebuffs every attempt by Don to rekindle a connection.

And finally Penny is in the abyss, living in the ramshackle muddy middle of nowhere with a hick boyfriend. She simply can't handle any reminders of a past that actually held promise. There is a fifth woman who was also Don's lover from about 20 years ago, by Don has to visit Michelle at the cemetery: she died five years ago and could not have written the letter.

Laura, Dora, Carmen, Penny and Michelle provide a short odyssey of lust, regret, rejection, hate and death. Would Don's life have been better with any of these women? And more importantly, is one of them the mother of his son? As with any journey that seeks a definitive answer, Don returns home with plenty of new questions and the nagging certainty that the solution to the anonymous letter puzzle is just tantalizingly around the next corner. And now every young man takes on the appealing prospect of being, just maybe, his son.

Bill Murray is enormously watchable, remaining well within himself while slowly allowing Don to succumb to the gnawing doubt filling the empty spaces of his soul. The actresses portraying the four former lovers get short shifts, and they all leave an impression. Tilda Swinton, in just her one scene, portrays what it means for a life to disintegrate under the weight of what must have been some truly shocking decision making.

Understated and heartfelt, Broken Flowers is an ode to the mysteries of life's alternative destinies.

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Movie Review: The Monuments Men (2014)

Inspired by true events, The Monuments Men recounts the story of Allied attempts to find and safeguard precious art as World War Two rages on the battlefields of Europe. The slice of history is worthwhile, but the film is preachy and lacks an emotional focus.

With the Allies preparing to wrest Europe from Nazi control, art expert Frank Stokes (George Clooney) convinces President Roosevelt that a special effort is required to safeguard Europe's artistic treasures from destruction and theft. Stokes assembles a group of art and architecture professionals including James Granger (Matt Damon), Richard Campbell (Bill Murray) and Walter Garfield (John Goodman). They are joined by Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin) and English army officer Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville). The group receives basic military training and arrives on the Normandy beaches a few weeks after the D-Day landings.

With Hitler still harbouring grandiose ambitions of opening a massive art museum in his name and filling it with stolen loot, Stokes' men use spotty intelligence reports and spread out to various towns to try and locate the hidden caches of art seized by the German army. Granger makes his way to Paris, and connects with Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), an art curator who was forced to collaborate with the occupying Germans but managed to keep detailed records of key art pieces. Meanwhile, Jeffries risks his life trying to save a treasured statue in a Belgian church. With the Germans in full retreat, Stokes and his men have to race against time to find and recover the art treasures of Europe.

The Monuments Men is a well-staged spectacle, professionally produced and overflowing with good intentions. But writer, producer and director George Clooney struggles mightily to find the right tone, and never gets there. The film oscillates wildly between juvenile levels of humour, attempting to capitalize on the long-ago reputations of Goodman and Murray, and scenes that desperately overreach to try and grasp some level of solemnity.

In the attempts to find a serious core, the film often veers towards commentary about the Holocaust rather than the artwork, unintentionally deflecting from the purpose at hand. The supposed highlight scene of Stokes face to face with a captured German officer fizzles miserably, Stokes' tiresome speech about buying a bagel from a Jewish cafe in New York going exactly nowhere in the context of the film.

In a case of spoon-feeding overload, on four different occasions Clooney takes to the pulpit to spell out, in lengthy monologues, the importance of the Saving The Art Mission. On three of these occasions, he uses a microphone to emphasize the preaching. In essence the film's audience is given no credit for being able to grasp the importance of attempting to save the world's most famous and valuable pieces of art.

The film also falls short in providing meaningful depth to any of the main characters. Stokes and his team are portrayed as well-intentioned and jocular, but precious little else is revealed about any of them.

Despite the shortcomings, The Monuments Men is passable entertainment, delivered with plenty of pomp and polish. Cate Blanchett as Claire emerges as by far the most interesting character, facing a dilemma about how much she can trust the newly-arriving Americans in uniform, as compared to just-departed Germans in uniform. And the star-filled cast members do their best, stretching the thin and uneven material as far as it will go with pure charisma.

Like a merely average portrait, The Monuments Men is pretty to look at but lacks a sense of lingering resonance.

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Movie Review: Tootsie (1982)

A comedy about gender politics, Tootsie delivers excellent laughs with sharp social commentary, propelled by a virtuoso Dustin Hoffman performance.

Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) is a struggling actor based in New York City. Passionate about his craft but with a reputation for being difficult to work with, Michael's career is slipping away into low-key suburban theatre productions. Desperate for a last chance at stardom, and much to the horror of his agent George (Sydney Pollack, who also directed) and room mate Jeff (Bill Murray), Michael dresses up as a woman, adopts the persona of Dorothy Michaels, and lands the part of a hospital administrator on Southwest General a tawdry but popular daytime television hospital drama.

Michael gives Dorothy an independent, feminist edge, shaking up the show and quickly becoming the toast of the town. But Michael's love life starts to get really complicated. As Dorothy places more demands on his time, he neglects potential girlfriend Sandy (Teri Garr). Meanwhile, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange), who plays the resident tarty nurse on Southwest General, finds herself strangely attracted to Dorothy, and Julie's widower dad Les (Charles Durning) is also quite smitten with the new star. Finally, the lecherous but semi-senile John Van Horn (George Gaynes), who portrays the senior doctor on the show, sets his sights on Dorothy as his next sexual conquest.

The unusually rich screenplay (co-written by Barry Levinson and Elaine May, among others) is able to maintain focus on the hearts of three characters, as Michael, Julie and Les all undergo journeys of discovery about what really matters in their lives. With a light touch but deliberate steering by Pollack, Tootsie delves into the skirmishes between the sexes, uncovering plenty of new angles to explore.

Michael thought that transforming into Dorothy would provide a superficial career boost. Instead, Dorothy became the change agent through which Michael gains a new perspective on his relationships. Michael becomes a better human being as Dorothy, with unexpected consequences.

While Michael's dour intensity and serious mannerisms mostly turned everyone off, Dorothy demands and provides R.E.S.P.E.C.T., and as it turns out, love and affection flow smoothly and in all directions when mutual respect is a common foundation. It becomes only normal that Dorothy's honest, open, playful and forthcoming personality attracts both Julie and Les. In Julie's case the purity of the relationship almost overcomes traditional gender boundaries, while for Les, Dorothy's virtue proves to be an immediate attraction to a widower.

Dustin Hoffman delivers an extraordinary performance, measured by how quickly the make-up is forgotten, and how powerfully Dorothy's presence as a woman is established and maintained. Michael's occasional stumbles in Dorothy's heels serve not only as comic touches, but also as a reminder that there is an actor beneath all those womanly clothes.

Jessica Lange, coming off career-making but highly intense roles in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Frances, demonstrates a glow for serious humour, Julie a much more interesting role than most comedies accommodate. Julie is allowing herself to be belittled in front of the camera as the airhead nurse, and off-camera by the show's director (Dabney Coleman). Dorothy proves to be an inspiration, and maybe more, prompting Julie to change her attitude towards relationships and more importantly, towards herself. Lange won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, the only win from 10 nominations received by Tootsie.

Terrific depth is provided by Durning, Garr, Coleman, Pollack, and Geena Davis making her screen début in a small, barely dressed, role. Durning, in particular, finds the sadness within a jovial but lonely man looking to fill the void left by the loss of a life-long love. Bill Murray pops up unannounced as Michael's laid-back room mate, providing acrid commentary on a pantomime spiralling into an unintended life experiment.

As it turns out, sometimes a man needs to walk in the heels of a woman to better understand what being a man really means.

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The Movies of Bill Murray

All movies starring Bill Murray and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Caddyshack (1980)

Stripes (1981)

Tootsie (1982)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Scrooged (1988)

Groundhog Day (1993)

Wild Things (1998)

Charlie's Angels (2000)

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Lost In Translation (2003)

Broken Flowers (2005)

The Darjeeling Limited (2007, cameo)

Get Smart (2008)

Zombieland (2009)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The Monuments Men (2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

St. Vincent (2014)

Aloha (2015)

Rock The Kasbah (2015)

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.