Working Girl (R)
AFI Catalog; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 1988, and I'm sure I must have seen it on TV or VHS or something, in the late 80s or early 90s. By the time I watched it again in 2024, I didn't remember anything about it besides the basic premise, and I didn't even get that quite right. I thought the main character was a secretary pretending to be her boss while her boss was away, but in fact the secretary pretends that she herself is a business associate of her boss, rather than a secretary. Anyway, Wikipedia calls this a comedy-drama, so I'm putting my review in my "serio-comedy" section, even though I didn't find it particularly comedic or dramatic. There's just no other category that it fits into at all. (Actually, Wikipedia calls it a "romantic comedy-drama", but I didn't find it particularly romantic, either.)

The secretary in question is Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), who gets a job as an assistant to Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). Tess also has a best friend named Cynthia (Joan Cusack), and a cheating boyfriend named Mick (Alec Baldwin). When Katherine breaks her leg while on a skiing trip, she has Tess take care of all her affairs back home. Looking through Katherine's computer, Tess learns that her boss had apparently stolen one of her business ideas. So, Tess decides to try to implement the idea herself, passing herself off as a colleague of Katherine's rather than her assistant. I don't want to get into any details of the deal she tries to arrange, but she partners up with a man from another company, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) to work on the deal. The two of them eventually start a relationship, which is later complicated by a plot twist I won't spoil.

And I don't want to reveal how it all ends, but it is a happy ending (even if a somewhat unrealistic one). I thought it was a reasonably entertaining movie, so I'm glad I finally re-watched it. But I didn't think it was really great, just good. And I don't know what else to say... except that there's an episode of Bob's Burgers in which Gene stages a play called "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl", which is a mashup of this movie and Die Hard. I can't really think of this movie without thinking of that.