Yuna@yuna_y

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Tootsie 1982 review

The premise alone earns a perfect score. An out-of-work actor who is impossible to work with decides to pass as a woman to get a soap opera job, becomes a national feminist icon by accident, and lands in a messy web of romantic entanglements. 10/10. Tootsie is from 1982 and I'd give it 4/5. A comedy from the 80s that plays like a documentary about how offices still run, because the plot has a man putting on a dress to expose how badly women are treated at work, and all these decades later corporate HR still hasn't caught up. What gets me is the setup. The protagonist is a pretentious actor no director in New York will hire, and his solution is to invent a female persona rather than go to therapy. That's male ego in its purest form. Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange have insane chemistry, and Hoffman in full drag as Dorothy Michaels is an acting masterclass. No CGI, no gimmicks, just peak 80s talent making a ridiculous premise feel genuine. If Tootsie were remade today, Film Twitter would spend three months writing 10,000-word essays dissecting every scene before it even hit theaters. We lost the ability to just laugh at a brilliant satire without starting a culture war.

3h

Yuna@yuna_y

Follow

Tootsie 1982 review

The premise alone earns a perfect score. An out-of-work actor who is impossible to work with decides to pass as a woman to get a soap opera job, becomes a national feminist icon by accident, and lands in a messy web of romantic entanglements. 10/10. Tootsie is from 1982 and I'd give it 4/5. A comedy from the 80s that plays like a documentary about how offices still run, because the plot has a man putting on a dress to expose how badly women are treated at work, and all these decades later corporate HR still hasn't caught up. What gets me is the setup. The protagonist is a pretentious actor no director in New York will hire, and his solution is to invent a female persona rather than go to therapy. That's male ego in its purest form. Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange have insane chemistry, and Hoffman in full drag as Dorothy Michaels is an acting masterclass. No CGI, no gimmicks, just peak 80s talent making a ridiculous premise feel genuine. If Tootsie were remade today, Film Twitter would spend three months writing 10,000-word essays dissecting every scene before it even hit theaters. We lost the ability to just laugh at a brilliant satire without starting a culture war.

3h