Michael Dorsey helps his friend Sandy audition for a role on the daytime soap “Southwest General”, but she is quickly dismissed. Michael is an acting coach and out of work actor who can’t manage to book his own gigs because of a reputation for being hard to work with. He argues with his agent about his prospects and, in a desperate attempt to prove him wrong, auditions for the role Sandy wanted. To do this, he disguises himself as a woman and auditions as “Dorthy Michaels”. Michael plans to use the charade to earn enough money to stage his own production, but Dorthy becomes something of a sensation. Michael plays her as a feisty, southern feminist, ad libbing and reinventing her scenes to escape the harassment typical for the show’s women characters. This resonates immensely with women watching at home, as well as the other actresses on set, like the actress Michael is crushing on, Julie Nichols. Inhabiting Dorthy, Michael is able to get closer to Julie and learn more about the sexist treatment women are forced to put up with on set. But as Dorthy attracts unwanted attention, both professionally and personally, the jig is harder to keep going. How will Michael escape Dorthy without hurting those around him? He probably wont.
“Tootsie” is one of many in a line of films where men cross dress for comedy; this makes it hard to avoid comparison and, quite frankly, it’s not really the best of the genre. What helps the film stand out is how relatively down to earth and dramatic it is. While the film indulges many of the comedic elements of Michael’s Dorthy-transformation, it also plays as a person in a real bind. You feel Michael’s yearning and you feel genuine tension that Dorthy will be found out. I mean, it’s Dustin Hoffman. He’s almost known for taking these out-there characters and humanizing them. And yet, its in the film’s grounded nature that it sort of backfires for me. You have this story of a man learning about all of the demeaning and predatory behavior that women deal with—all while actively pursuing Julie through sheer deceit to get close to her (and leading Sandy on carelessly). And the film never really deals with this, for Julie at least. She’s a character who has a weakness for going back to disrespectful men and, well, she’s mad at Michael for like, 5 minutes. Lol. Maybe that’s the point, but it’s a dysfunctional one. Anyway, the film was fun enough and I really liked the Bill Murray pretentious-writer character. But it almost takes itself too seriously for its zany resolution and runs a bit too long for my taste.