The Associate (1996)
A surprisingly progressive female empowerment message movie from the mid 90s with a stellar performance by Whoopi Goldberg. It is sort of mixup between Tootsie, Trading Places and Wall Street with Whoopi Goldberg not getting the recognition she deserves as a very skillful business consultant, who ends up subverting the entire finance world by making up a non-existent male partner for her firm. Which in this world means that she is actually able to make deals, simply because everyone thinks there is an old white male at the head of the firm. It is not exactly subtle with its themes here, but it pulls it off with good amount of humor while still acknowledging the real misogynistic tendencies of the business world. It almost jumps the shark in the last act, though the finale pulls through with standing ovation.
Rating: 4