Love At The Top

(John Bowab, 1982)
This completely hackneyed 'Romance Theatre' soap opera - it keeps dipping to black in the middle of scenes to make way for imaginary commercials - applies some incredibly bad set design (dig that cityscape!), spaz lighting, and occasionally haywire camera work to its strictly boilerplate corporate climber love narrative. But it does retain a certain fascination if only for the unbridled hyperbole of its performers. It's sad that James Ingersoll's utterly clownish shmuck is absent for the second half, but at least his hopeless 'fun' routine provides a keynote for the others. Lead Marcy Vosburgh is a high-strung, grinning fool of a fashion executive, Kathleen Coyne repeatedly indicates stress by bugging out her eyes and pulling her hair, Robyn Millan does a great lip-biting bitch before she goes all conveniently virtuous at the end, and even Richard Young's dullard love interest seizes every opportunity to make a fool of himself. The constant resort to interior monologue is almost as amusing as the relentlessly recurring 'driving' shots. Still, no one needs 105 minutes of this shit, hyperbole or no.