The new year has barely begun, and it’s already heavily populated with movies about working women getting theirs or at least getting even, on the job. Mad Money, 27 Dresses and Untraceable lead the pack, and foreign film entries like Caramel and Alice’s House – both about that particular female oasis, the beauty shop – are kicking in with gusto too. Now Jessica Simpson arrives to grab some nine to five workplace attention on screen, in Scott Marshall’s Blonde Ambition. The movie opened briefly in December in Simpson’s home state of Texas, and is now out on DVD this month.
Jessica stars in Blonde Ambition as Katie, a small town naive young country woman from Oklahoma who takes off for New York City to pay a surprise visit to her boyfriend, an aspiring male model trying his luck in the Big Apple. When she walks in on her fiance in a compromising position in bed with a stripper, he dumps her. A stunned and shattered Katie stays over at her longtime girlfriend Haley’s apartment (Rachel Leigh Cook) while in emotional recovery.
By chance Katie gets sucked into a job and a corporate scheme, while filling in for Haley one day as a bike messenger making a fateful delivery to a company. A couple of crafty office employees there (Penelope Ann Miller and Andy Dick) have some nasty ambitions of their own, which entail outwitting the head honcho and replacing him. And gullible Katie, who is thrilled to get any kind of work, is snatched up to serve, unbeknownst to her, as a cover for their covert hostile takeover. Meanwhile, the mailroom clerk hunk (Luke Wilson) is making persistent moves on a less than reciprocal Katie.
Jessica Simpson gets it pretty much right as an easily suckered though far from lame brained country girl, who needs to learn fast how to sidestep all the pitfalls and potential sharks prowling the dog-eat-dog big city. And she tackles the role of a sympathetic and comically naive character, while narrowly just missing slipping into the idiotic dumb blonde routine. Though her character could have done well with some serious toning down of the clownish clothes and lightening up of the far too lavishly applied lipstick.
SONY Pictures Home Entertainment
Rated PG-13
DVD Features: Behind The Scenes Featurette; Deleted Scenes.
