Review of Tootsie (1982) by Jason R — 27 Aug 2009

I hereby nominate the music in "Tootsie" as the single worst film score of all time. It is the quintessence of bad taste, and it shouldn't be all that surprising to find it in a Sydney Pollack movie. Which brings me to my second observation: is there any other Hollywood persona about whom the following can be said--his acting is as good as his directing is awful? Call it the "Pollack Axiom." Since his blistering portrayal of masculine middle-aged entitlement and misanthropy in Woody Allen's brilliant "Husbands and Wives," Pollack has done some absolutely wonderful work in front of the camera. During the same stretch, he's also done some embarrassingly bad, hopelessly middlebrow work behind the camera. The only genuinely good movie he's ever made is "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" And a great deal of that film's success is due to one of Jane Fonda's best performances. I haven't seen every film of Pollack's, so defenders are welcome to rebuke me, but I think we can all agree his career as a director was forgettable.

"Tootsie" is really no exception to the Pollack Axiom, but it has its moments. For the first half hour or so, as the scenario gets established, the film is funny and breezy. Hoffman is confident and easily capable of carrying the film, and Murray still gets a laugh with every line. There's far too little Teri Garr, though, as far I'm concerned; at the peak of her talents, she might have been Hollywood's funniest pretty actress. (Lange, on the other hand, does some of her most tepid work here. It's almost hard to believe this is the same actress that gave one of the cinema's sexiest performances just a few years later in the otherwise middling remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice.") Once the mechanics of the plot have been established, the film suddenly becomes turgid and quite dull. Ironically, the movie is at its most heteronormative during Hoffman's ascendancy to fame (which I find unrealistic and totally typical of Pollack as a director--Hoffman's drag queen has to keep her job, but it's the mark of a hack director reaching for the back row that she also becomes a national phenomenon). Suddenly, all of the characters fall into trite and conventional gender norms, and Hoffman comes to understand women better mostly through outdated cliches.

But the big reveal is still satisfying and amusing, and I think, if we're willing to be generous, the ending of the film goes a ways toward redeeming its sexism. Just before the credits roll and the atrocious music ensures we all understand that this is a HAPPY! ending, Hoffman's character finally wins the heart of the beautiful blond starlet by saying he became a better man by being a woman. I kind of suspect that this line is meant to be a Hallmark-style platitude, but if we take it very literally--much more so than the film seems to want us to--there's a message of gender equality there that would still stand out in contemporary Hollywood. Perhaps the film is merely a giant spoonful of sugar designed to make this drop of medicine go down, but I walked away thinking there's a dash of insight here, whether its creators realize that or not.