TheGDfather I grew up loving this movie to be honest with you. I was born in '77 so I would would have been around 10 actually closer to 9 considering my birthday was late in the year. And I didn't really realize how much I liked Kim catrall till I got older. My memory of movie stars wasn't as great at 10 like it is now at 40. I didn't even realize it was here until after sex and the city was almost over and reviewed the movie again recently. I have it Blu ray and I'm looked to find mannequin two which Kristy Swanson is hot as well too.But Kim might have just made this movie what it was. I showed this to my roommate who is 27 so this is before she was born. She has never seen it and all she talks about is the the guys girlfriend and what she is wearing and her hair. I must say that's my favorite part about watching these older movies. Yes 1987 to 1993 had their own look. And shoulder pads for women and their huge hair spray hair (which I'm not sure if she had) was in. Even how they wore their hair was really unusual compared to before an now. The 70's girls hair was model looking and a lot of people wish they could get their hair like Lynda carter or the charlies angels. The whole Melanie g working girl is out.And the plot is honestly horrendous now that I look at it. Great idea but you didn't really sell me on it. The police officer who plays a police officer in every movie was just out of place. He made sense in short circuit, and made sense in police academy but here he was out of place. Then again all mall cops are out of place to be honest. But a mannequin from the past that comes to real life. Interesting but sell me on it do. And the guy black guy in place with mannequins. Not buying that either. Probably what he is most remembered for and technically he was a better actor than that. I saw him in an episode of the heat of the night. Good actor died way too young. Mannequin two was funnier. But you are still stuck in that '87 to '93 time line so keep in mind the attire. Its not exactly top of the line.But Kim's part she was hot. And just like in porky's where you had to put a jock strap in her mouth when she had sex. Heck she turned into a mannequin just to avoid people. She also made you feel like you just wanted to do something fun. A beautiful girl makes you do crazy things...Now that's an original idea...hmm think not. Probably the easiest casting that director did. Her acting was great, her looks great and she gave it a feel to it that the show needed or it would have died. Plus just like your typical 80's, a great movie song. I love the "Nothing going to stop us now" Still play it at bars when I go out. Its a classic. So should you see this movie, yes you should. If anything its great to talk about and Kim's part alone was good enough. Not to insult the other actors, but the director should have including some room for other actors to be themselves. The main character was flat too and so was his girlfriend.

thesar-2 What a flashback to the Hollywood days of old. Where sexual harassment is accepted, homophobia sometimes okay and miracles with almost zero explanation can be dismissed in seconds.It's hard to criticize a movie like Mannequin. Sure, it's crazy, goof- ball and would never happen back then or now, but it was a light- hearted, fantasy of love across…the ages? At least it wasn't as dark as other mannequin stories like I Know Who Killed Me and 2012's Maniac. Basically, the ALWAYS lovely Kim Cattrall wishes for something more in Ancient Egypt and the gods fast forward her a few times over the millennia to finally land with Andrew "Jonathan" McCarthy. Only, she's trapped in a mannequin's form so no one but Jonathan can see her. Oh, and he falls in love with her and because others see her as a stiff, pure antics ensue.It's cute, it's harmless – well, except for said un-PC themes mentioned above and best of all, it gave the world one of the best movie songs of all time: 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now' by Starship.Sorry, lest I forget, it also provided the outrageously fabulous Hollywood character in which Jonathan was the straight man of the duo. Um, no pun…? Definitely worth a watch if you loved it back then or for the first time today. It still holds up, if you just remember one simple rule: this was made in and is 100% pure 80s. ***Final thoughts: I mentioned homophobia above, and some of the characters are, though one might be closeted, himself. But, it was refreshing to see how Jonathan and Meshach "Hollywood" Taylor took to each other very nicely. Plus, Jonathan, who barely knew Hollywood early on and most certainly not as good friends with him until later, completely defends gays while making a statement against bigots. That was nice to see a stand in a 80s movie that could've very well taken the stance: "Well, that's just the world we live in."Additionally, I wonder if True Blood's Nelsan Ellis got even a little bit of inspiration for his Lafayette Reynolds character from Hollywood. Hmmm

Python Hyena Mannequin (1987): Dir: Michael Gottlieb / Cast: Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Getty, James Spader, G.W. Bailey: Corny romantic comedy that seems to reference the emotional side of love using the term mannequin as a symbol. Andrew McCarthy plays Jonathan Switcher who has a knack for creating art, including a mannequin he recently designed. Unfortunately he has been fired from every job out there. Kim Cattrall prays to the heavens to be vanquished of her Egyptian lifestyle of organized marriage. After an earthquake she is darted ahead to modern day where she inhabits the very mannequin Jonathan created. After landing a job in said store she comes to life, much to his shock but he is the only one who can see her. Preposterous, idiotic and written full formula straight through but one observes that director Michael Gottlieb had an idea. Cattrall is the spirited high full of gusto and enthusiasm. She helps Jonathan become a hit with window dressing thus threatening competition. Other characters cannot be believed. McCarthy is laboring under cardboard material. Estelle Getty as manager is flat. James Spader as Mr. Richards tries too hard. G.W. Bailey as security is an over the top version of his Police Academy role. Finally there is the cliché gay African American named Hollywood who competes with the rest of the fakery. Theme of emotional love barely comes alive in this store window freak show. Score: 4 ½ / 10

James Hitchcock The last romantic comedy I reviewed for IMDb was the Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah vehicle "Roxanne", coincidentally also from 1987. That film has something else in common with this one. The term "romantic comedy" is often used to mean any boy-meets-girl love story with a happy ending, regardless of whether or not it is particularly humorous. "Roxanne" however, is a romantic comedy where the comedy is at least as important as the romance, and I think that the same holds good for "Mannequin". Admittedly, the style of humour is very different in the two films. "Roxanne", loosely based upon a classical French drama, is characterised by a much more intellectual, verbal humour, whereas in "Mannequin" the emphasis is much more upon slapstick and a very broad character-based humour. Yet both films never lose sight of the fact that the principal aim of a comedy is to amuse. According to Michael Gottlieb, the film's director and writer, he got the idea for the story when, walking down Fifth Avenue, he thought he saw a mannequin move in a department store window. It has, however, always struck me that part of the inspiration must have been "One Touch of Venus" from the late forties, another supernatural fantasy in which a young shop assistant falls in love with a statue which magically comes to life. The main character is Jonathan Switcher, an aspiring young artist, who finds it difficult to hold down a job until he finds work as a window dresser at Prince & Co., a large and long-established, but financially struggling, Philadelphia department store. While working there he falls in love with a beautiful blue-eyed blonde named Emma Hesire. There is, however, a catch. Emmy (as she is known) is originally from Ancient Egypt and has been transported to the Philadelphia of the 1980s by some capricious Egyptian gods. (I know that blonde hair, blue eyes, being called "Emma" and the ability to speak perfect English with a Canadian accent are not attributes normally associated with Ancient Egyptian womanhood, but as the above synopsis might suggest this is not a film which places a high premium on realism). There is a further catch. The same capricious gods have transformed Emmy into a mannequin. She can come to life for Jonathan as long as he is the only person who can see her. When anyone else is around she has to turn back into a mannequin. Emmy has one further attribute not normally associated with Ancient Egyptians or, for that matter, with mannequins. She has a genius for designing shop-window displays and gladly uses this skill to assist Jonathan in his work. The displays they produce together are so brilliant and attract so many customers that they radically improve the company's financial position, much to the disgust of the store manager, Mr Richards, who is secretly part of a conspiracy to run the company down so that a rival can acquire it at a rock-bottom price. The film narrates how Jonathan and Emmy are able to frustrate this conspiracy while at the same time coping with the difficulties in their romance caused by Emmy's turning back into a mannequin. Andrew McCarthy, like a number of his fellow "Brat Packers", was widely regarded as a rising star during the mid-eighties, although his career has been rather patchy since. The least brattish of the Brat Pack, he was often cast as good-looking, clean-cut romantic heroes, his Jonathan here being a good example. "Mannequin" is a rare example of a Hollywood older woman-younger man romance where the age difference is not turned into a major plot point or obstacle to the love of the two characters. Ignore the fact that Emmy is supposed to be about 4,500 years old; the glamorous, sophisticated thirty-something Kim Cattrall is clearly more mature by several years than the boyish twenty-something McCarthy. The film was successful at the box office, but the critics mostly disliked it. (Rita Kempley called it "made by, for and about dummies.") I, however, have always had something of a soft spot for it. Certainly, it is based upon an absurd premise and many of the characters are one- dimensional caricatures. It certainly will not win many awards for political correctness, relying as it does on stereotypes like the outrageously camp and effeminate gay man and the arrogant, preening and sex-obsessed Frenchman. Many of those characters do, however, generate a lot of laughs, especially Meshach Taylor's flamboyant window dresser Hollywood Montrose, G. W. Bailey's paranoid and officious security chief Felix Maxwell, James Spader's smoothly hypocritical Richards and Carole Davis as Jonathan's bitchy and snobbish ex-girlfriend Roxie. (In 1987 Spader was a relatively unknown actor, not the big name he was to become after his performance in "Sex, Lies and Videotape" a couple of years later). The film, in fact, is a lot better than "One Touch of Venus", a botched attempt to transfer a Broadway musical from stage to screen while excising a lot of the music which made it a hit on Broadway. The central idea may seem silly, yet it is no sillier than a lot of fairy-tales which have been a beloved part of European culture for centuries. A mannequin coming to life is no more absurd than the idea of a frog turning into a handsome prince or a princess falling asleep for a hundred years after pricking her finger. "Mannequin" is essentially a modern-dress fairy-tale which (unlike some other modern-dress fairy- tales such as "Pretty Woman") keeps the element of magic. Like all good fairy-tales it ends with virtue rewarded and vice punished and a wedding for the beautiful princess and her handsome prince. (It is, I think, no accident that Jonathan and Emmy work at a store called Prince & Co). The tale is told with enthusiasm and good-natured humour which makes the film enjoyable watching. Mention should also be made of Starship's catchy theme song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". 6/10