This is How Movies Should Be Made

The Worst Film Ever

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Watchable if nothing else, this Whoopi Goldberg vehicle doesn't reach for the stars, but instead weaves social commentary on the glass ceiling and racial prejudice into the comedy of a business whiz (Goldberg) who invents a fictitious business partner when she finds she can't advance on her own merits, apparently due to her gender and race. But the ruse becomes difficult to manage as various investors demand to meet the elusive "Mr Cutty", and Goldberg resorts to costumes and well-staged theatrics to hide the fact that Cutty doesn't exist.Reasonable supporting cast features Tim Daly as a sleazy corporate type, ubiquitous to just about every film that depicts 'corporate America', Dianne Wiest as Goldberg's chronically under-appreciated right-hand woman, Eli Wallach as an old-school investor keen to meet the elusive Mr Cutty, and Austin Pendleton as a bookish inventor and CEO on the brink of bankruptcy until Goldberg can restore his standing. Blink and you'll miss Colleen Camp in a very minor role as a detective.Occasional slapstick and farce, fused with the usual dry-wit for which Goldberg is accustomed, it's a studio picture with all the typical hooks and clichés, nevertheless, very mild and satisfying. And as a footnote, good to see Bebe Neuwirth in a particularly sultry role as an all-too-eager business associate to Wallach; she has a couple of scenes sans most of her wardrobe that are quite revealing.

I thought "The Associate" was a great film dealing with one of the major problems of today's society : judging everything and everyone on the way it looks instead of what it is. In this case : she is (and looks like) a woman, and therefor she must be inferior to men. The acting was very, very good, but that's what we're used to see from such people as Whoopy Goldberg, Diane Wiest, Eli Wallach, and so on. Then why am I only giving a vote of 8 ? Because of the final scene! The whole film was, though in every way a comedy, very realistic, but that last bit was completely over the top and utterly unbelievable. This is, in my view, one of the big flaws of American films : they just MUST HAVE a happy ending, no matter how far fetched it may be. Nevertheless a film worth seeing and seeing again.

I will never understand the Hollywood writers who can't get around public disclosure/exposure.From the second the movie started I knew how it was going to end. NO surprises and I can only wonder when they will stop doing this.How many movies have you ever seen where the person decides to either "COME CLEAN" and tell the truth in front of the entire world or is exposed in front of the entire world.At what point does it stop? I can't even think of the last time a movie that did this did well. SO WHY KEEP DOING IT????There was a great premise to the movie about women and the glass ceiling, but instead it turned into an idiotic movie. WHO didn't know the second Whoopi's character said Cutty died on the boat that everyone would survive? Who didn't think that no one in real life with that kind of smarts would do something that stupid?Then the idiotic attempt with the car wreck. It just kept getting stupider and stupider.Then who didn't know she was going to expose who she really was at the dinner? ANYONE? AND then that she was going to get an ovation from the people outside? No wonder movies like this keep failing. NO ORIGINALITY. NONE! They could have made it funnier and more believable and still gotten away from that idiotic PUBLIC EXPOSURE crud. AND still made a great point.But they didn't and they still keep doing that idiocy. You see it on TV shows every darned week and movies to this day do it.DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB. Too bad they had idiot formula writers. Or did they even have writers? Maybe just something downloaded from the internet.Who knows? Such a good premise too.

I just watched this film on TV, and I wasn't that impressed. "Interlink will make internet look obsolete" and out of date lines like that didn't help either. But the main problem of the film is that its TO ridiculous to be believable. Being a comedy its supposed to be a bit ridiculous, but having every single character except Whoopi's be total idiots is to much. And the applaud sequence at the end, ugh, thats to lame to even comment upon =/ .The topic of the movie (women having a hard time in the business world) is perhaps a good one, but the way its done is way to bad.I give it 3-4 out of 10.