Broad Appeal

At your next pub quiz, when asked to name a Whoopi Goldberg movie that features Donald J. Trump, you'll have the answer! THE ASSOCIATE is a 1996 satirical comedy of finance and feminism in which the Whoopster launches a one-woman campaign to break into the world of Wall Street (with help from spunky secretary Dianne Weist). This Clinton-era curiosity was woke before woke... sort of. You see, this film's version of taking down the patriarchy involves layering its heroine in a mask of (Caucasian) latex to pose as a fictitious white male titan of industry: the aptly - and repetitively - named Robert Cutty. (What was that name?? Cutty. Cutty? CUTTY!) There is probably a brilliant Brechtian bouillabaisse to be made from these ingredients, laced with a hearty helping of identity politics, but this earnestly flat-footed film is not it. Instead, it's Simone de Beauvoir meets Mrs. Doubtfire as the very real structures of institutional sexism serve as the backdrop for a gender-bending so-called romp. And they say the n