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Originally posted by Joe Blevins

Last night, TCM ran a film called The Barefoot Executive, a live-action Disney comedy starring Kurt Russell as a lowly mailroom employee who discovers a clever chimpanzee who can pick hit TV shows. Using the chimp's advice and passing it off as his own, he's able to rapidly ascend the corporate ladder, and well -- all sorts of wackiness ensues. Although the movie is live-action, its cast included a number of prominent cartoon voice actors: Wally Cox (Underdog), Dave Willock (Wacky Races) and -- perhaps most fascinating of all -- Heather North, who voiced Daphne on Scooby Doo and didn't really do that much "face" acting, unlike Willock and Cox. I had this strange sense of deja vu when North began speaking. It took me about 15 minutes before I remembered where I'd heard that voice before. It's somehow reassuring to know that the voice of Daphne was a babe in real life, too. The movie's cast is chock full of familiar character actors, including Harry Morgan and John Ritter.

Today, the movie will probably be lumped in with other "chimp" comedies like Ed or Every Which Way But Loose, but the monkey is really just the McGuffin here, the element that drives the plot. What's really being satirized here is corporate culture, i.e. the idea that a monkey can outwit a bunch of Harvard Business grads in three-piece suits. The Barefoot Executive reminded me a lot of The Hudsucker Proxy: the ambitious young guy who rockets from the mailroom to the boardroom but lets his success go to his head; the fancy office with ostentatious furniture; the sneaky corporate spy; the cadre of stressed-out executive types who sputter and fume over the success of the young go-getter; the love interest who is charmed by the hero but briefly becomes disillusioned when the hero loses his way; and of course all the physical comedy hijinks involving falling from tall buildings and hanging from window ledges (a handy visual metaphor for the precariousness of corporate success). The Coens say they were mainly inspired by How To Succeed In Business, the King of all Corporate Ladder comedies, but I wonder if they ever saw The Barefoot Executive.

For that matter, can anyone else recommend some good corporate-ladder comedies? Besides the movies I've already mentioned, the only one which comes readily to mind is Working Girl. Office Space, which I just today rewatched on Comedy Central, is kind of the opposite: a guy who climbs the corporate ladder *despite* his lack of ambition. I'm referring more to movies about lowly employees who INTENTIONALLY ascend the ladder to the top.

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