Tootsie (1982) * * * *

Directed by: Sydney Pollack

Starring:  Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Bill Murray, Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman, Doris Belack, Sydney Pollack

Actor Michael Dorsey has a long talk with his agent who tells him flat out that he won't be hired by anyone in New York or Hollywood.     Dorsey (Hoffman) has a history of antagonism with directors and other actors.     "You have one of the worst reputations in this town," his agent George Fields (Pollack-who also directed) tells him candidly.    "I can't even put you up for a commercial.   You played a tomato for 30 seconds.    They went a half-day over schedule because you wouldn't sit down,"    Resourceful and desperate, Dorsey decides to audition for a soap opera (remember those?) as Dorothy Michaels, a middle-aged frump with a slight Southern accent.     He wins the part and begins his life anew as a working actress, which is not without its complications.

Tootsie is an engaging, intelligent comedy about a pain-in-the-ass actor who discovers his better side while pretending to be a woman.     He encounters male chauvinism, sexual harassment, and two men smitten with him (as her), one of whom happens to be his co-star's father.     The co-star, Julie Nichols (Lange in her Oscar-winning role), becomes Michael's love interest, but he can't act on it because she knows him as Dorothy.    They become close friends, mostly because Julie admires how Dorothy stands up to her boyfriend (and the soap opera's director) Ron Carlisle (Coleman).   Ron is a sexist pig who calls women "sweetie" and "toots" and isn't shy about having affairs with other actresses on set.     Dorothy drives him nuts by constantly making up lines and refusing to be treated like dirt.   

It's funny how I refer to Dorothy as practically another character in Tootsie.    Hoffman so convincingly creates Dorothy that I forgot at times that he was a man pretending to be her.    Further complicating matters is his friendship with Sandy (Garr), a neurotic would-be actress who auditioned for the part that Michael (as Dorothy) won.    They are friends who slept together one time and Michael spends the rest of the movie dodging in order to preserve his deception.     Also in the mix is Michael's roommate Jeff (Murray), a playwright who goes along with the deception, but comments, "It is just for the money, right?"

The movie mixes up farce, romance, and the harsh world of acting in just the right amounts.     It never becomes silly nor overly sentimental.      Michael loves Julie, but also doesn't want to break her heart by revealing that her best friend is really a man.     George notices the difference in Michael, "Since when do you care about what other people feel?"     As a struggling actor who once quit a play because he is asked to walk to center stage so his character could die there, he has no issue with arguing with anyone who interrupts his vision of his role.     As a woman, he begins to see what a putz he was behaving like as a man.      We see him fend off the advances of a lascivious co-star and proposed to by Julie's father, and we really begin to feel for the guy.     Tootsie is a film that after 30-plus years still maintains a warmth that we don't see much in comedies anymore.