Tootsie (1982)
Retro Review #60: Remember when a man wearing a dress was funny?
Tootsie (1982)
+ Feature film, 1h 56m🎖️
+ 1️⃣/2 works in Tootsie multiverse ⭐
A+^
Grade: A+^ (20.0) / HOF: 90
EQ 👍A+ | 📖A+ 👥A+ 📽️A 🎼A+
DW 😎7.6 | 🌚7 🌝9
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬆️1️⃣ 👀⬆️🔼 🛐⬇️2️⃣
Michael Dorsey has a problem. He’s a great character actor living in New York City in the prime of his career, but he’s difficult to work with, so no one will hire him.
He solves his problem by putting on a dress, taking on the identity of actress Dorothy Michaels, and landing a part on a daytime TV soap opera. That’s when his problems really begin!
Tootsie is one of the funniest romantic comedies ever, delivering killer lines, hysterical situations and maybe the best satirical climactic monologue in cinematic history.
The cast of Tootsie is stellar. Dustin Hoffman excels as Michael/Dorothy. Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Bill Murray and Geena Davis, all well known in the 80s, contribute greatly.
And producer/director Sydney Pollack, who deserves much credit for all the fantastic performances, even has a role as well, playing the part of Michael’s long-suffering agent.
Tootsie was nominated for ten Academy Awards, although only Jessica Lange took home an Oscar, winning Best Supporting Actress.
The theme song “It Might Be You” with music by Dave Grusin and performed by Stephen Bishop, received one of the ten Oscar nominations and hit #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in 1983. The soundtrack album for Tootsie remains a favorite of mine forty-plus years later.
While the comedy and music of Tootsie are both top-class, the movie delivers much more than that, making it one of my favorite films ever.
I was a drama major in college when it was first released, and Hoffman’s performance is a masterpiece of acting, while the film is both a gentle satire of the acting community and a generous gift to the acting community.
Beyond even that connection with the film, my first viewing of Tootsie was during one of the loneliest times of my life. Underlying all the comedy of Tootsie, there is an undercurrent of romantic loneliness.
But the movie gives us hope. Yes, it makes us laugh when it illustrates bad behavior by both sexes that sabotages our chances of finding romance. But it makes us better when it promotes unselfishness and honesty as the right answers to loneliness.
And Tootsie does all this, delivering comedy and meaning, always with perfect authenticity. It understands that the differences between men and women are real, not cosmetic, and are worth celebrating.
Did you know that Dustin Hoffman didn’t view Tootsie as a comedy? Take three minutes to watch this interview where he explains why. Then if you’ve never seen Tootsie, move it to the top of your list. If you have seen it, trust me, it gets better with each viewing!
Onwards!
+ last viewed (5) 2025-04-08, HDX7, 2.39, 1M
+ first viewed 1982, ThX, 2.39, 1
+ 🥰💘😏😥🥸😛🎭🤩📺
+ ❌0️⃣ Problematic for teens and sensitive adults. | PGc
+ 😡+1 😵💫-0 🤬-1^ 🤭-0 🫣-0
+ 👀⬆️🔼 ➖(😐)
+ ✝️ +1 ➕😇💜💜🩷 ➖🤬(👙)
+ ✡️ -0 ➕🤍 ➖(🌓🫢)
+ 🗽 -0 ➖(💻)
Last updated 2025-04-10
Please do not include spoilers in the comments.
Spoilers are permitted in the Chat for this work.
WOW, that was a powerful clip. No wonder Dustin Hoffman did such a great job. He was my favorite actor for a long time, simply because he could pull off such different characters, make them interesting and believable, in Midnight Cowboy, Kramer vs. Kramer, and the other famous films you mentioned. But as a woman, it's delightful for me to hear a man "get it" like he does in this clip. I have complained before about all the women in a TV show (like Star Trek) being beautiful and slim, despite the fact that in the future we're supposed to be beyond racial or species or anti-android prejudice, and even my husband doesn't see my complaints about the all-conventionally-beautiful female casting as a valid criticism!
I suppose it's a valid complaint that all the women in most TV shows are beautiful and slim, but to be fair, the majority of the men are handsome too. Let's face it, all of us prefer watching good-looking people in most roles, and how are we supposed to wish we were the protagonist if the romantic interest of the protagonist isn't attractive to us? Even in non-romantic roles, I'm very much OK with Hollywood mostly casting good-looking people, even though that limited my acting to college theater. 😉 (And not every woman cast in Star Trek was conventionally-beautiful and slim *cough* Whoopi Goldberg *cough*)
I was more interested in Hoffman's description of his real-life behavior. I realized even in my 20s that it wasn't fair to women as people that I had less interest in the unattractive ones. But unlike Hoffman apparently, I didn't only meet women in bars and ignore the less attractive ones.
I was in social circles where sometimes women I wasn't attracted to were interested in me. Once or twice there was even a case where it was a woman whose personality I really liked. In one case, I remember wishing I did find her physically attractive. The problem can be compounded because if a person is viewed as less attractive and ignored by the opposite sex, then when someone *does* treat them as a valuable human being, it can create false hope of romantic possibilities.
And this issue does go both ways. Although women typically value more than looks alone, a man not viewed as attractive faces the same sort of discrimination, thus the whole "incel" community.
One thing I really appreciate about women is that, generally speaking, the average woman has more respect for marriage than the average man. So because I am married, I now feel as if I usually don't have to worry about my intentions being taken the wrong way when I treat a woman as an interesting person, even if I don't find her physically attractive.
But I sure agree that was a powerful clip, which is why I included it in the review. I'm glad you liked it! Hoffman was and is a favorite actor of mine as well. So many of his performances are simply amazing, and this was one of his best.