Strikingly unusual romantic comedy.
New Yorker Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) cannot hold down work as an actor because he's too opinionated to accept his directors' instructions. Out of desperation, he pretends to be a woman (reshuffling his name as Dorothy Michaels) and is hired to play a hospital administrator on the popular TV soap opera Southwest General. While on the set he meets and falls in love with another member of the cast, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange), who believes he is both her new best friend and also a woman.
Hoffman is at his best – pushy but vulnerable, quirky but sharply witty. Lange is also excellent. Bill Murray, as Michael's long-suffering friend Jeff, pretty much does his usual thing. Teri Garr, meanwhile, has an intriguing role as his other friend Sandy.
In the film's oddest moment, Sandy catches Michael in a state of undress in her bedroom where he hopes to find new clothing ideas for his Dorothy persona. But hoping to hide this from her, he pretends he wanted to sleep with Sandy and then goes ahead and does exactly that. Moments like this make it quite revealing in terms of the gender politics of the late 1970s/early 1980s, and the film would certainly have turned out differently if it had been made now.
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