“Mannequin was filmed at Woolworth’s...Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat”. I mean...don’t take my word for it. That’s divisive New Hope, PA legends Ween singing on their dead-on Philly blue-eyed soul pastiche “Freedom of ’76.” And maybe don’t take their word for it either as Mannequin was filmed at a department store called Wanamaker’s, not Woolworth’s. Boyz II Men, despite losing that dude who doesn’t so much sing as just talk real low, appear to still be keeping up the beat...at least of this writing. I don’t really have much of a personal connection to Mannequin other than having, you know, watched it when it came out in 1987. I remember thinking “well, that’s just fine.” I would say I haven’t really thought about it much since but that would be a lie because A--I’m a massive Ween fan and B--The Mannequin Soundtrack features the #1 Starship monster ballad “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” a tune that people are still crushing at karaoke on the regular in the year 2020. The only people who remember that this tune came from an 80’s comedy are probably either wolfy luddite VHS hoarders like myself or people who watched the Starship video, heavy with scenes from the flick, on YouTube (actually...it says that the video has 131 MILLION views...so maybe more people know Mannequin than I think?).
Someone recently suggested to me that Mannequin was far more terrifying than any 80’s horror flick...so I decided to go ahead and check it again and...you know...the kid makes a fair point. What happens is this: we open in Egypt “a long time ago...just before lunch” (dumb). Sex in the City fornication enthusiast Kim Cattrall is about to join hands in an arranged marriage. And you and I...we both know that Samantha Jones don’t play that shit. She’s like “god...friggin’....get me outta here” so that’s what he does. He causes an earthquake that somehow leads to KC just up and disappearing (note: best not to ask questions during this movie....of any kind). He’s a righteous dude, that god. Cue credit sequence where the plot of the forthcoming movie plays out in animated form. I know I’ve said it many times before but I’ll say it again: it does not bode well when a movie with a running time of less than 90 minutes has a super long opening animated credits sequence. Actually I have said it once before and the movie was Madonna’s Who’s That Girl...which also came out in 1987. I don’t know...maybe there was an animation studio offering a coupon for mad cheap animated credits sequences that year.
Since you’ve already seen pretty much everything that will happen in the movie in this tidy little animation you could really just hit “eject” now and save yourself an hour and change. Should you decide to bravely soldier forth, however, this is what you’ll see: the action resumes in mid 80’s Philadelphia, where we find comparatively milquetoast Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy working as a mannequin designer. Dude’s name is Jonathan and he fancies himself an artiste but doesn’t appear to be very good at anything. He designs a mannequin that looks exactly like Kim Cattrall...which is cool...but I guess it took him wicked long to design it so he gets fired...which is less cool. He tries his hand at a bunch of other jobs but he just totally sucks at absolutely everything. Like, there’s an entire “Jonathan getting fired from a shit ton of jobs” montage. His unemployability is particularly disappointing to his high falutin girlfriend Roxy, who promptly dumps his doe eyed no job havin’ ass. Roxy is played by an actress by the name of Carole Davis, whom I was unfamiliar with...but I went ahead and plugged her name into a search engine only to find out that she co-wrote the song “Slow Love” off of the Prince album Sign O the Times...which means she co-wrote a song off of Prince’s 2nd best album (out of 39 albums)...which means this Carole Davis is cool in my book!
Jonathan mopes around Philly in the rain like a sad sack...crying into his cheesesteak and what have you. His one-man pity parade comes to a screeching halt when he spots that one mannequin that he designed in a window display at Not Woolworth’s. Dude has a total “eureka” moment! He’s gonna apply for the job at the department store and turn his life/this movie around! So that’s what he does. First thing the following morning he heads down to the store (Prince & Company), where he has the good fortune to arrive just in time to save the department store owner from being impaled by a falling sign. He peels the store owner up off of the sidewalk and HOLY SHIT! It’s Golden Girls star Estelle Getty!! Stepping out for a little non-GG side hustle, eh ‘Stell? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was 7 years-old when Golden Girls premiered...but Estelle Getty playing Bea Arthur’s mother when she was only one year her senior literally tied my head in knots (and yes...I know what “literally” means). She was actually younger than Betty White, who is STILL ALIVE!!! Shit, when Mannequin was filmed she was still paying full boat at the buffet. No AARP card for homegirl for at least another year, you dig?
Sophia Petrillo hires Jonathan on the spot but since he’s useless he has to start in the mail room, like every other enterprising young 80’s comedy white boy. He immediately starts some static with the James Spader-ish department store GM...played by none other than James Spader. Bah hah hah what did Spader and McCarthy split an Uber from the set of Pretty in Pink?? I was a little surprised to see Jimmy Spader as his name does not appear in the credits on the VHS box. I don’t know...maybe he’s leaving this flick off of his CV? Jonathan settles himself in and quickly befriends Hollywood Montrose, the store's “flamboyant window dresser”. Hollywood is played by the late actor Meshach Taylor...who is described as the “flamboyant window dresser” from Mannequin on at least three different Wikipedia pages. He was also a mainstay on the show Designing Women...and if there’s a Mount Rushmore of dearly departed 80’s sitcom stars Estelle Getty and Meshach Taylor would definitely be on it. I’m not sure what the fact that they are both in this movie together means! Probably nothing. Old Mesh absolutely crushes it as Hollywood though. He even reprised the role in Mannequin 2: On the Move, a film I have not...and will not...see. However, Andy McCarthy was replaced by Fright Night Star Billy Ragsdale and Kim Cattrall was replaced by replaced Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Kristy Swanson. Remember when Kristy Swanson was in that movie The Chase with Charlie Sheen and...like...Flea and Anthony Keidis? Neither do I, really.
Hollywood decides to take Jonathan under his wing and let the kid help out with the flamboyant window dressing. This immediately draws the ire of the store’s lone security guard Captain Felix Maxwell, played by the guy who played Captain Harris in Police Academy parts 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (but not parts 2 and 3). At first I was psyched to see a familiar face from my Police Academy watching days. Then he calls Hollywood a “Mary” and my excitement quickly dissipated. Jonathan, to his credit, calls Maxwell a bigoted jerk. Not too often you see homophobia called out in flicks like this. Right so Hollywood and Jonathan are creeping around the store at night doing their thing. Hollywood says he needs to step out to find some jelly donuts. As he exits the friggin’ Kim Cattrall mannequin COMES TO LIFE! That’s all there is to it; one minute she’s a mannequin...the next she’s a sentient being. She isn’t struck by lightning like Johnny 5 in the Short Circuits. No one brings her to life with some voodoo incantation like Shelley Long in that one flick where she chokes to death on a chicken ball. She’s just ALIVE. She’s like...”sup brah...my name is Emmy and I’m from 25 B.C., FUCKERS!” She explains that she has tried out several time periods throughout history but she figures 1987 must be the best. I mean...wouldn’t she look...like...wicked old? I know, I know...don’t ask questions! Hey...I would kill to be in 1987 right about now. I’d immediately go buy a copy of Appetite for Destruction with the original murder robot cover on vinyl! Emmy gets right down to business helping Jonathan set up the window display. She also explains that he is the only one she will appear alive to...because I guess he made her? Wait...then what the hell was she before she was a mannequin?? Gah, again with the questions!
Meanwhile across town Roxy is waiting to go on a pity date with Jonathan, who never does arrive. Instead her co-worker Armand rolls up in his Trans Am and says “Roxy! You look so foxy! Can I ride you!?” He is the worst character in any movie ever. His sole purpose here is to sexually harass the shit out of Roxy. I’d like to say this situation ends well...but...read on. It turns out Roxy and Armand work at the far more illustrious department store across the way called...umm...Illustra. They have their designs on a hostile takeover of Prince and Company ‘cuz that joint’s business is in the crapper. They even have Jimmy Spader working as a double agent trying to make the deal happen...because he’s a slippery fucker like that. Got to keep an eye on James Spader at ALL TIMES always. But hold the phone, Illustrans! Turns out Emmy’s window is a HUGE hit and people start flocking to the store like HUH!? Is it possible for a window display to be a huge hit? I went and looked at the Bergdorf window in NYC at Christmas and thought “cool”...but I didn’t buy anything.
Spader is rip shit about the sudden bump in popularity and wants to fire Jonathan immediately. This seems reasonable as the kid is way overstepping his boundaries. Luckily, Golden Grandma has his back! Not only is he not getting fired, the old lady says the store ain’t for sale! Emmy and Jonathan celebrate by taking part in a super intense “running around the store at night dressing up in costumes to a Z-grade Madonna knockoff tune called ‘Do You Dream About Me?” Emmy comes up with another bomb ass window and Jonathan keeps getting/taking all of the credit. I mean...what’s the mannequin gonna say? She’s a mannequin. The Illustra crew figures they can just hire Jonathan away from Prince and Company. They dispatch Roxy...who pretends to be sweet on Jonathan again and offers him $40k a year, which wasn’t all that much coin even back in ’87. The kid says he’s all set.
Undeterred, Roxy and Armand break into Prince and Company in the middle of the night to spy on Jonathan. As they are crawling through the woman’s department Armand says “Can I show you something in your size” and then starts to pull out his dick. I barf all over myself. They find Jonathan and Emmy just minding their own...canoodling in a beachy window display. Of course, to them, it looks like he’s cuddling a mannequin. I guess this is supposed to be funny? I mean...they used to keep this movie in the comedy section, not horror, so. Captain Felix steps to Jonathan and is all “the fuck is going on here, dude?”mNot unreasonable, right? But then Felix beats the living shit out of Jonathan...which is way uncalled for. Tells him he’s gonna knock him into the middle of next week. Emmy saves the day by soaring through the department store on a hand glider and getting the drop on the bad guys. Now that shit looks FUN! Maybe Macy’s would survive if they let you hand glide through their stores.
When Estelle Getty finds out about what went down with the beatdown she’s rip shit. She fires Captain Felix and Jim Spader and promotes Jonathan to VP of the company! Just like that! Started from the bottom now we here! Everyone is super upset...none more so than the people still watching this movie. Roxy tries to appeal to Jonathan once again while he’s loading Emmy onto the back of his motorcycle for a little late night cruise around Philly but dude says he’s all set. Shithead Armand materializes and says that what Roxy really needs is sex...specifically with him. She says that yes she will have intercourse with him. The #metoo movement dies a trillion deaths. Luckily Armand can’t get it up. He says it’s Roxy’s fault because she’s ice cold. I kick my living room table over, sending copies of Premiere Magazine from the 1990’s scattering everywhere. While Jonathan and Emmy are out looking at the Liberty Bell or whatever Captain Felix and Spader show up to give chase. They figure if they can’t have Jonathan they might as well steal the mannequin. What follows is the most low rent car chase ever filmed. It’s like the one in Beverly Hills Cop but on a budget of whatever cash the producers happened to have in their pockets at the time.
Back at the store Emmy and Jonathan finally ball in a hammock. She tells him that it was “breathtaking” (the balling). I continue to have a lot of questions. He tells her that he has big plans for the future: he doesn’t want to just design windows...he want to design...wait for it...an entire city!!! Bro, you aren’t even designing the windows! Maybe pump the brakes a little there Frank Lloyd Wright! Jonathan passes out in a haze of post coital bliss. When he is finally roused from his slumber the store is already open and full of customers and dude is lying naked on the floor (cold and shamed, presumably). Instead of calling the police, the customers? They start clapping. Jonathan discovers that the Illustra people have stolen Emmy in the night! The horror! In the next scene Hollywood comes rolling up in his baller pink Cadillac and unfurls a polkadot car cover with his name on it. This scene really has nothing to do with anything...but it’s probably the best part of the movie. Just sayin’.
Jonathan runs over to Illustra guns a blazin’ (not real guns, fortunately. Or unfortunately?). He busts into the boardroom all “gimme back my mannequin sex doll” and they up their offer to $50k per year. He declines. There’s a fight, and during the melee, Roxy decides, you know, fahhhhk this nonsense! She’s gonna take Emmy and put her through a wood chipper, which is conveniently located in the loading dock of Illustra. Do all department stores have wood chippers at the ready? She throws the mannequin on the conveyor belt and hits “puree”. Jonathan is trying to come to the rescue but he has 50 cops and the entire cast of the movie chasing after him. Luckily, Hollywood turns a fire hose on the cops to keep them at bay. I thought that shit was HYSTERICAL when I was a kid. Now? Not so much. Jonathan crawls up on the conveyor belt just as Emmy is about to get ground up like that one guy in Fargo. Just before her foot is about to hit the blades BOOM! she comes to life! Actual life! The wood chipper operator sees what’s going on and shuts the machine down. Jonathan and Emmy start necking like crazy. The wood chipper dude sees this and figures all mannequins come to life if you make out with them so he reaches into a pile of trash and digs out Roxy and tries to have sex with her while she yells “No!”...and “Stop!” It is the worst.
ANYWAY...the whole crew comes crashing into the loading dock and are genuinely puzzled by the fact that Emmy is no longer a mannequin but, if fact, alive. And really WHY WOULDN’T THEY BE!!!? The Illustra people are all “arrest Jonathan!” and Jonathan is all “arrest the Illustra people...they kidnapped my girlfriend!!” Estelle Getty says that there are cameras in the store and the footage will prove that the bad guys are bad guys. Jonathan asks “Umm..grams...did you see everything on those cameras??” She gives him a little wink. Ew! So Estelle Getty watched them fucking?? Pervy! So Emmy is permanently alive and HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE!?? Why couldn’t she be seen by everyone before?? How is he going to explain her presence? How is she gonna get a Social Security number?? Filmmakers...EXPLAIN YOUR WORK! I say...a better ending would’ve had Jonathan become a mannequin too...like how Tom Hanks became a fish at the end of Splash. That shit would’ve tested through the roof. Stand in stone forever...just like the song says. Nope...instead they get married in the window display. Cue Starship tune...which was actually co-written by Albert Hammond Jr of The Strokes’ssssss dad Albert Hammond Sr. The end.