"Sometimes I dance around my apartment in my underwear... doesn't make me Madonna."

I first saw Working Girl in late December of 1988; it was my first week home after my 88-day study-abroad stint in Sevilla (Seville), Spain, and my friend Betsy Matteis knew I needed to get out and have fun after being in a foreign country and feeling homesick for nearly three months. It was just a few days after Christmas, and the malls were still crowded, so we decided to first see a movie until part of the shopping frenzy had eased a bit.

"What movie do you want to see?" Betsy asked as we were walking to the Town & Country multiplex's ticket window. "Anything in particular you might want to see?"

Having been "out of the loop" for almost the entire Fall Term, I was totally clueless about what new movies were coming out. I shook my head and said, "Nah. Haven't the foggiest."

"Oh!" Betsy said, her expressive face lighting up as inspiration struck her. "How about that new movie with Harrison Ford?"

Betsy and I have been friends, like, forever; we met in the fifth grade at a South Florida elementary school in the mid-'70s but only really became close when we were in high school. She and I both liked Harrison Ford, and although we had seen him mostly as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, we had also liked him in Witness, one of the first roles in which the audience saw Ford play a more reality-based romantic leading man. I gave it about a nano-second of thought, looked at the other film titles on the "menu," and said, "Why not? Harrison is a cool guy, and Sigourney Weaver's also pretty good....Let's go see it."

Of course, I'd also heard of Mike Nichols; he had directed a few films I'd seen, including The Graduate, so I knew he had an established track record as a director of both dramas and comedies. And obviously I was familiar with Melanie Griffith, although I had not seen any of her films. I'd read about some of her films; they seemed to rely on her sex appeal more than any other aspect of her personality, and while I'm not uninterested about erotic content in movies, I'm more of an action-adventure/sci-fi kinda guy.

Still, Working Girl -- I could see the poster off to the side as we stood in line -- seemed to be the perfect distraction for my first real outing since my return from Europe.

As it turned out, I was right. I found myself totally captivated by Working Girl's take on the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying formula, in which the obviously talented but girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the tracks Tess McGill (Griffith) proves that a "mere" secretary with " a head for business and a bod for sin" can succeed in the high-stakes and high-pressure brokerage business, generating new ideas and even putting together a complicated mergers-and-acquisitions deal with the help of Jack Trainer (Ford).

Working Girl is more than just a "cute" modern-day Cinderella-in-a-business-setting romantic comedy, for Griffith's character must not only prove that a temp secretary who's putting herself through business school at night can compete with Harvard-graduated MBAs, but she also has to overcome betrayal on various fronts. For as fans of this end-of-the-Eighties classic fish-out-of-water comedy know, Tess' trust is violated by several people in her professional and personal circles.

For instance, broker David Lutz (Oliver Platt) pretends to take Tess seriously but keeps her from getting into the firm's entree program for new brokers; instead, he offers her up as a "sex toy" for sleazy brokers such as Bob (Kevin Spacey, in an early film role). Tess' "payback" scene is a gem to watch, but the little stunt gets her fired.

Her boyfriend Mick (Alec Baldwin, in his rising-new-star days) seems to be a loving and caring beau despite his penchant for giving Tess sexy lingerie for her birthday; the true nature of the handsome but philandering rogue is revealed in a heartbreaking scene in which Tess arrives at their apartment after work and finds Mick in bed doing the "horizontal bop" with a brunette named Doreen. "This isn't what it looks like!" Mick says...but it is.

The key betrayal in Working Girl," though, comes from Tess' new boss at the brokerage firm Petty Marsh, the coldly beautiful yet too-ambitious Katherine Parker (Weaver). At first, she takes Tess under her wing, winning her over with talks about teamwork, trust, and mutual respect. Yet beneath her "wannabe-mentor" facade there's a dark and rapacious nature that would put T. Boone Pickens to shame, as well as an ego that would fill the Empire State Building. As Katherine tells Tess when the subject of a possible marriage proposal comes up:

Tess McGill: What if he doesn't?... pop the question?
Katherine Parker: I really don't think that's a variable. We're in the same city now, I've indicated that I'm receptive to an offer, I've cleared the month of June... and I am, after all, me.

Yet all seems to go well until Tess comes to Katherine with a shrewd business proposal; Trask Industries is seeking to expand into broadcasting and fend off a takeover bid by Japanese competitors. Although the obvious move for Oren Trask (Philip Bosco) would be to purchase a TV station, Tess figures out that a radio station, or even an up-for-sale radio network would not only be cheaper for Trask, but it would also kill the takeover bid; FCC rules at the time prohibited foreign ownership of broadcast media. Katherine, who has an agenda of her own, promises Tess she'll look into it, then later says that the idea is a no-go. Trask doesn't want to purchase any radio assets; TV is the company's real goal.

But when Katherine breaks her leg on a ski trip in Europe, Tess discovers that Katherine has contacted deal-making expert Jack Trainer to sell the Trask/radio concept, not as Tess' idea but her own. Furious and hurt, Tess decides to fight fire with fire and comes up with a risky but daring plan: using her new education in both business and speech classes and Katherine's office and wardrobe, the plucky New Yawk secretary transforms herself into a polished and savvy broker and hooks up with Trainer to make a deal between Oren Trask and the retiring patriarch-owner of the Metro Radio Network.

Working Girl's conclusion is never in doubt since, like When Harry Met Sally and other romantic comedies, it has to follow the basic "girl-gets-the-guy, achieves-her-goals-while-learning-valuable-life-lesson" Hollywood fairy-tale formula. The fun, of course, is not the happy ending -- for we know there is one -- but the journey itself. Not only does director Nichols get wonderful performances from the entire cast, including Joan Cusack as Tess' best friend Cyn and Nora Dunn as a chilly, stuck-up Price Marsh exec, but he also had a witty and sparkling screenplay by Kevin Wade and music by Carly Simon, which was scored by composer Rob Moonsey and features the Oscar-winning song "Let The River Run."

Even though I knew Griffith's Tess would end up ditching Mick and going off with Jack -- and that Katherine would get her just deserts -- Betsy and I left the Town & Country theater feeling pretty good. Griffith, Ford, and Weaver were a great combination, and it was rather refreshing to see Harrison and Sigourney break out of the Indy and Ripley molds just for once. And although (as I said earlier) I'm more into action-adventures than I am into romantic comedies, I have watched it on cable and on DVD. It's clever, funny, and very appealing, and it's definitely one of my favorite films.

Although there are no flaws whatsoever in this movie, I was jolted by sadness when I not only saw the World Trade Center featured prominently in both the Main and End Title sequences, but when I found out that the Petty Marsh lobby scenes were filmed in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center, which was destroyed by Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.