Review of Mannequin (1987) by Rebecca B — 25 Aug 2009

This just scrapes into my Top 50 Movies (see my Profile page on Flixster) on the premise that it's a terrible guilty pleasure of mine. There were a fair few similar 1980s movies I could've chosen here, such as 'Weekend At Bernie's', 'Some Kind Of Wonderful', 'Pretty In Pink', 'The Breakfast Club' and 'The Lost Boys' to name but five, but 'Mannequin' stands out for me as the most over-the-top, overly-camp, ridiculously cheesy '80s film there is.

And I love it. The premise is totally bananas - an Eygyptian bride-to-be doesn't want to her arranged marriage to take place and ends up being transported through time and space to become a plastic mannequin in a shop window, who only comes to life at night when the store closes.

I have to admit, I had a major crush on Kim Cattrall when I was younger (and who, oddly, looks very much like my wife!), and a lot of people commented that I looked like Andrew McCarthy in my teenage years, so this may have pushed me into liking this movie a bit too much!! Ha ha.

The two leads play off each other well, though McCarthy (as Jonathan Switcher) lacks the charisma and charm to really make his window-dressing slacker character his own, whereas Kim Cattrall (as Emmy) is often as wooden as a mannequin should be in scenes where she should be shining.

However, they are surrounded by fantastic supporting characters, such as Estelle Getty as the beleagured store owner who's stock rises because of the amazing window displays that keep getting created each night by Cattrall and McCarthy's characters (which, in actuality, look pretty terrible!!), James Spader as the super-creepy and slickly-slimey Mr Richards (who works for a rival store), and G.

W. Bailey as his usual 'Police Academy' Seargent role moonlighting as the Security Night Patrol Chief of the store. The best said about Meshach Taylor's turn as 'Hollywood' - the walking gay cliche of a window dresser, with a fashion sense that could only ever come from the 1980s - the better.

But, he's sooooo overtly gay, that is ends up sprinting past a parody and turning into a vaguely sympathetic character. This is '80s fluff at it's best; fantasy mixed with fashion. A slave to the decade it was made in but happily chained to all of us who grew up in that era.