Themes: Cons and Scams, Success is the Best Revenge, Work Ethics
Main Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Dianne Wiest, Eli Wallach, Tim Daly, Bebe Neuwirth
Release Year: 1996
Country: US
Run Time: 113 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
In this comedy, a woman discovers that it's impossible to get ahead in business without a man to guide her -- so she invents one. Laurel (Whoopi Goldberg) is an expert financial analyst with a top Wall Street brokerage; however, she keeps getting passed over for raises and promotions, and she's convinced that no one at her firm takes her seriously because she's a black woman. Frustrated, Laurel and her loyal assistant Sally (Dianne Wiest) open a new firm, but Laurel discovers that her fears were based firmly in reality: male clients don't want to take financial advice from women, especially women of color. So Laurel invents a white man, Robert S. Cutty, to be the firm's top adviser. Speaking on Cutty's behalf, Laurel passes along the fictional man's advice, which her new clients find to be quite sound, and when they stop by to see him, he always manages to be out of the office (and why wouldn't a man so successful be busy?). The ruse seems to work, and soon Laurel's business is going great guns, but an increasingly large number of her clients want to see Cutty face to face, which won't be easy to pull off. However, with the help of a drag queen, Laurel tries to remake herself into Cutty for a night in order to keep her firm afloat. The Associate was based on a novel by author Jenaro Prieto. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
To its credit, The Associate never becomes fixated on Whoopi Goldberg's race, identifying her gender as the source of her exclusion from the giant gentleman's club that is Wall Street. This makes Goldberg what, by 1996, she undoubtedly preferred -- just a popular female actress, who can be divorced from her racial identity when it suits the story. But there aren't too many other surprises contained in The Associate, an amiable but unremarkable farce about how a woman creates an imaginary male partner in order to lend legitimacy to her own sterling business ideas. Donald Petrie's film has some smart comments to make about the business world, and Goldberg is mostly convincing, outside of several moments of sass that undercut the credible businesswoman she's trying to show the world she is. What the viewer must accept is that Wall Street would go crazy over a phantom business entity whom no one has ever met, a ruse so fragile that it would crumble under the slightest poking from an investigative journalist. (And what a poor casting choice for that intrepid reporter role -- big-haired fiftysomething Noo Yawker Cindy Mason [Lainie Kazan], who walks around grotesquely dangling a cigarette, seeming like a total finance novice). But most farces rely on such suspension of disbelief, and the film actually takes flight when Goldberg dons her Robert Cutty outfit -- a Marlon Brando mask applied convincingly enough to make her look like a real, if slightly mummified, white man. Dianne Wiest is at her perky best as Goldberg's assistant, and when these two over-40 women take the market by storm, it's a nice goose of populist feminism. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
George Morfogen - Plaza Manager; Joel Blake - Poker Palyer; Leon Addison Brown - reporter; Colleen Camp - Detective Jones; Miles Chapin - Harry; Jean de Baer - loan officer; Darryl Edwards - executive At Strip Club; Helen Hanft - Mrs. Cupchick; Jerry Hardin - Harley Mason; Baxter Harris - Disgruntled Investor; Zeljko Ivanek - SEC Agent Thompkins; Billy Jaye - Plaza Reporter; Lainie Kazan - Cindy Mason; Ken Kerr - Charlie; Vincent Laresca - Plaza Men's Room Attendant; George Martin - Manchester; Bernie McInerney - Cilent At Cutty/Ayres; Peter McRobbie - Executive At Strip Club; Liana Pai - Plaza Concierge Charlotte; Austin Pendleton - Aesop; Sally Jessy Raphael - Herself; Rex Robbins - Investor At 21 Club; Frederick Rolf - Carl Bode; John Rothman - Jogging Track Executive; Socorro Santiago - Syntonex Worker; John Short - Harley's Associate; Brian Tarantina - Eddie; Donald Trump - Himself; Louis Turenne - Peabody Club Concierge; Thomas Wagner - Harley's Associate; Katherine Wallach - reporter; Ira Wheeler - Investor At 21 Club; Lee Wilkof - Bissel; Ginny Yang - Funeral Reporter; Robert Levin - Door Slam Executive; Boris McGiver - Plaza Reporter; Ted Brunetti - Fallon's Messenger; Allison Janney - Sandy; Johnny Miller - Himself; Craig Braun - Disgruntled Investor; Kathleen McClellan - Frank's Girlfriend; Larry Gilliard, Jr. - Plaza Bellhop Thomas; Alberto Alejandrino - Maître D' At Peabody Club; Judith Calder - Audience Member; Jonathan Freeman - Hockey Game Executive; Roy Gerson Orchestra - Fallon Ball Band; Corrine Manning - Fallon Ball Band; William Hill - Detective Templeton
Credit
Philip Messina - Art Director, Mary Colquhoun - Casting, René Gainville - Co-producer, Michael A. Helfant - Co-producer, April Ferry - Costume Designer, Vebe Borge - First Assistant Director, Donald Petrie - Director, Bonnie Koehler - Editor, Robert W. Cort - Executive Producer, Ted Field - Executive Producer, Scott Kroopf - Executive Producer, David Madden - Executive Producer, Barklie K. Griggs - Musical Direction/Supervision, Christopher Tyng - Songwriter, Alex Nepomniaschy - Camera Operator, Andrew Jackness - Production Designer, Patrick Markey - Producer, Frederic Golchan - Producer, Adam Leipzig - Producer, Rosa Howell-Thornhill - Sound/Sound Designer, Nick Thiel - Screenwriter
