The Mannequin Movies

There are two movies I want to talk about: Mannequin and Mannequin: On The Move. Both are brilliant examples of 80's and 90's cheese. (It says it right on the box for Mannequin!) Everything from the fashion choices to the music to the style of romance are dated, but I think it is all fabulous. For the fun of it, I am just going to talk about each one at length.

First, the Similarities

Both movies are about a seemingly normal guy who walks just a little off the beaten path and ends up working at a large, fancy department store. In both cases their boss is Hollywood Montrose, a man who is very proud to be black, gay, and fabulous to the extreme. He is quite a lot of fun to watch, even though movies like this have been criticized for making their gay characters' personalities nothing but flamboyant. Despite that I think he is a great character who does his best to support our protagonist even when he has his doubts about what he gets up to in the store at night. In both movies, our hero comes across a mannequin who can come to life, and he of course falls in love with the beautiful, charming woman. Oh, and both movies take place in the fictional department store Prince & Company, which I think helped inspire the theme for the sequel.

Mannequin (1987)

We learn through a strange scene in a tomb that the beautiful, blonde Emmy is an Egyptian princess who refuses to marry any of the men her parents introduce her to, and prays to the gods that she receive adventure and travel rather than an unwanted husband. Lightning flashes, her mother is shocked to see her daughter has disappeared, and the title credits show an Egyptian cat cartoon version of Emmy being sucked through time. We learn from a few rushed lines later in the movie that she travels through time when artists from various centuries create her and she comes to life for them, such as Leonardo Da Vinci.

In the modern day '80's, Jonathon is a creative man, but his obsession with perfection gets him fired from many jobs (pizza maker, hedge pruner, etc.), including one where he sculpted mannequins for stores. He spent an entire week making one perfect mannequin when he was supposed to make two or three every day, and is fired without being allowed to keep his creation. One rainy night as he is riding his motorcycle home from another failed job and an ended relationship with successful businesswoman girlfriend Roxie, he sees the mannequin in the window of department store Prince & Company. He goes up to the window shouting how much he had wanted to take her home. The next day, he happens to save the owner Claire from getting into an accident and she gives him a job there, and he ends up helping out Hollywood, the flamboyant window designer and store decorator. When he is alone with the mannequins, Emmy comes to life and they start dressing the windows together and having fun all night. She is there to be his muse and no one else can see her alive. She freezes into a mannquin whenever anyone else is near.

It turns out that Richards, the vice president, is working for a rival department store where ex-girlfriend Roxie works and is a big part of why Prince & Company has fallen on hard times. Jonathon and Emmy's windows have drawn a lot of attention to the department store and sales are improving dramatically. Richards tries to have Jonathon fired, but Claire continues to promote him. Eventually she fires Richards and the inept security guard after their continual harrassment of Jonathon. He and Emmy continue their strange relationship, and his coworkers see his fixation on the mannequin as a sort of fascinating quirk. Unfortunately, Richards and Roxie discover this preference and decide to take her. When they can't tell the mannequins apart, they steal every female mannquin from the store, which Hollywood and Jonathon discover the next morning. Jonathon confronts those he suspects, but no one can tell him anything. Roxie goes one step further and takes all the mannequins to the shredder and trash compactor, forcing Jonathon to jump onto the conveyor belt to catch Emmy right before falling in. He can barely hold the mannequin when she suddenly comes to life. She is now a person of flesh and blood for everyone to see, and Jonathon and Emmy are soon married in the Prince & Company store window.

Here is a link to my favorite song from the first movie.

Mannequin Two: On The Move (1991)

This movie is one big fairy tale and pretty much starts over, rather than being a sequel to the first. Personally I believe they poured a lot of money into this movie because it was following Mannequin, a fairly well received film, and needed to make a splash. I also think it is a much better film, despite not being particularly liked by critics or audiences.

In the beginning, in the small European country of Hauptmann-Koenig near Germany, lives Prince William, who has fallen in love with a mere peasant girl named Jessie. He plans to marry her no matter what his mother the queen says, but on their way to the church she stops them with her castle guard and her sorcerer. The queen has the sorcerer offer Jessie a golden necklace as a gift in return for letting the prince go, but instead the prince takes the necklace and puts in around her neck, saying that it will be a token of everlasting love. Jessie then turns into a wooden statue due to the necklace's curse, much to the prince's horror. The queen makes a deal that Jessie will not remain frozen forever, that instead the spell will end after thousand years or when she meets her true love from another land. The prince accepts the deal, but curses the country to misfortune for as long as Jessie remains frozen.

In modern day, the country of Hauptmann-Koenig lives under a perpetual rain cloud and has a bad economy. One of their rare tourist attractions is the Enchanted Peasant Girl, who stands on display. Count Spretzle, the decendant of the sorcerer, is convinced that he has correctly calculated the exact date and time when she will wake up, and he plans to take her away to Bermuda as his bride, also stealing the royal jewels and other valuables. But first, she will be flown to America where department store Prince & Company is holding a grand cultural event in honor of the legend of the Enchanted Peasant Girl, which the queen hopes will bring some money and acclaim back to Hauptmann-Koenig.

Meanwhile, Jason Williamson is a young man whose mother runs a dating service out of her house. He has just started work at Prince & Company. The unpleasant manager Mr. James assigns him to the creative team, which is run by the fabulous Hollywood Montrose. He takes Jason under his wing, and soon after they hear that something has gone wrong with the delivery of the Enchanted Peasant Girl. They drive Hollywood's pink Corvette to the river to see that the truck holding her was in an accident due to Count Spretzle's idiot bodyguards, and the mannequin falls out of the semi into the river. Thinking she was real, Jason dives in and retrieves her, and they drive her back to the store to clean her up. As they drive, Jason cleans up the mannequin and we see that when he tinkers with the necklace she briefly comes to life in his arms, although he does not notice.

Jason feels very silly for thinking the mannequin was real, and talks sheepishly to himself and her as he cleans her up back in the workshop. He takes off the necklace to clean it—something only her true love should be able to do—and Jessie comes to life. At first he is terrified, but she is convinced that he is her Prince William and is so sweet, pretty, and innocent that he calms down. He ends up taking her out for a night on the town. They have Philly cheesesteaks, drive around in his Jeep, go to a club to dance, and have a great time. He brings her home to his mother's house and sleeps on the floor while she has the bed, then makes her breakfast, but unfortunately neither of them have figured out what caused her to stop being a wooden statue and Jessie puts the cursed necklace back on. Jason has no choice but to take her back to the store, where Count Spretzle is furious to discover she has been temporarily moved. Jason tries briefly to explain to Hollywood what happened, but feels crazy, so he lets it go.

Not long after, Hollywood takes to admiring the cursed jewels, removing them from Jessie and trying them on. (The curse seems to have been broken in terms of someone being turned to wood for a thousand years, but the main curse remains.) He turns to wood without Jessie noticing and she goes off to look for Jason, only to be swept off to shop throughout the store. The henchmen come to check on her, taking the necklace from Hollywood and freeing him, although none of them really know what happened. The count is furious with them, and about the fact that Jessie has turned back into a woman ahead of schedule, and they embark on a wild goose chase. Jason tells Hollywood about how Jessie is real, and Hollywood says he understands. "This has happened before." Count Spretzle attacks them by throwing pots from the floor above and shooting at them with equipment fromt the sports department while the henchmen chase Jessie, who escapes on a go cart. Jason tracks her down to his mother's house, but soon Count Spretzle, Mr. James, and the police have caught up to them. With Jason held back by the henchmen, the count puts the necklace back on Jessie, making it seem like Jason stole the Enchanted Peasant Girl, landing him in jail.

Hollywood gets Jason out of prison by dressing up as a high ranking military officer, and they just barely escape in order to get back to Prince & Company for the big performance. Jessie is presented amongst a sea of colorful dancers, then Jason is brought in as a surprise, written into the show as the valiant prince. He revives Jessie and the count challenges him to a duel. They fence for a bit before Spretzle pulls out a gun, shooting Mr. James in the leg and taking Jessie away to the rooftop where his henchmen have prepared an escape balloon. Jason holds on as the balloon goes up and the count tries to have his way with Jessie, eventually climbing in to fight. He can't bring himself to push Spretzle over the edge, but the count is far less chivalrous and tries to push Jason out. Jessie puts the necklace on him, announcing the same spell that was placed on her. As Jessie and Jason hug, the ugly count mannequin is bumbed out of the basket so that it falls to the street below. The henchman go after the pieces, but they are swept up by a street cleaner.

At the end, we see that the taped together Count Spretzle has taken Jessie's place as the enchanted statue in the Hauptmann-Koenig museum, and that she and Jason are now living happily.

What You Can Take Away

These movies are definitely not meant to be taken seriously. Just from the names of the girls who are supposedly from hundreds or thousands of years in the past, you can tell that only so much deep thought went into them. Emmy is supposed to be gyptian and Jessie is supposed to be German? On top of that, Emmy's full name is Ema Hepshire, according to Wikipedia, making it even stranger. On top of that, they are both ridiculously blonde. Jessie is maybe believable, but Emmy? She looks like an 80's fitness coach, not a princess from the old world, let alone one from south of the Mediterranean.

In the first movie, the whole Egyptian princess plot has little to no impact on the story besides turning Emmy into a mannequin and occasionally doing the "Walk Like an Egyptian" dance. She briefly puzzles over a sound system once, then never really questions technology again, before or after. (This is handled a bit better in the sequel, although they use a lot of Jessie's dumb blondeness to keep it from getting too complicated.) What the first movie was really good for was 80's fashion—huge earrings, shoulder pads, metallic fabric—and a lot of great 80's music. There is a whole piece of the movie shot like a music video, since Jonathon and Emmy spent a lot of time just messing around with the clothes before dressing the windows.

In my opinion, the second movie is much, much better in terms of story and character. Emmy from the first movie seems like a series of adjectives thrown together to make "the perfect woman": beautiful, graceful, creative, velvety voice, playful, sexy, charming, sensual, etc. Although Jessie is a total airhead, she at least contributes a bit more to the story besides being the damsel in distress stuck in a mannequin body who needs to be saved at the end. (Don't get me wrong, that is exactly what she is, but I at least like her a little bit along the way.) She is very beautiful, but her character is less the perfect woman and more the naiive, pure-hearted girl. Her timeline is completely mapped out from start to finish. We see the romance, we see the bad guys, we hear the reasons behind everything, we even see that she had a family and know a little bit about what she was training to do for work, and then things jump to modern times and set the scene for the current state of affairs.

I do not think either actress playing the mannequin girls is Oscar worthy, but I at least like to see Jessie's (Kristy Swanson's) smile. Kim Cattrall plays Emmy and I feel like her acting goes back and forth. One moment she and Jonathon are having the time of their lives. At other moments, she does not seem fully invested in what is going on around her. She seems like she was hired for her pretty face and body, which is understandable, but otherwise she is just not all that likable. She is the object of Jonathon's affections. Jonathon is an odd guy, and it is hard for me to believe in the attraction between them, which is made even weirder by the fact that Emmy looks the way she does because Jonathon sculpted her that way. The whole movie feels a bit like watching a young man's wet dream come to life. It doesn't help that Jonathon (Andrew McCarthy) has a baby face. Jason (William Ragsdale) in the second film is young looking, but so is Jessie.

Jonathon (Mannequin) with Emmy, human and mannequin.

There is something more refreshing and fun about watching the sequel than there is watching the original. A lot of the comedy from the first Mannequin comes from the fact that Jonathon is the only person who can see Emmy alive and it is so painful to watch him drive around with a mannequin on his motorcycle, get caught with her in the bathroom, or be found naked and asleep in the middle of the store when he fails to wake up early after a night with her. On the other hand, silly as the dialogue can be in Mannequin on the Move, there are some legitimately sweet moments. The romance doesn't feel so forced, especially since Jessie is not there to be Jason's muse who happens to fall in love with him; she is there because she truly wants to be with him, although she is something of an airhead. For example, when they go out to the club, she is bemused by the modern ways of dancing and begins a folk dance. Jason goes along with it and soon the whole club is doing some version of their dance. The first movie tried to have cute moments like this between Emmy and Jonathon, but I found all of them to be really uncomfortable, save for when they might dance together. She seems significantly older than him and there is nothing about Jonathon that makes you think she would actually fall in love with him. The character is written so that she is kind of a sexual being in her creators' lives, as she mentions that Da Vinci was more interested in a guy called David than in her, but there is something about the way the actors are together on screen that speaks to a lack of chemistry, in my opinon. Jason and Jessie's relationship is campy, but sweet. He respects her boundaries, wants to know things about her, wants to see her enjoying herself, and they seem to enjoy spending time together. It is also nice to see the main couple in a public setting, rather than just alone in the department store. It feels more like a fairy tale and less like it could all be a delusion.

Jonathon taking Emmy for a ride on his motorcycle (Mannequin) and Jason being reminded by Hollywood that Jessie is made of wood (Mannequin on the Move).

On top of that, the villains are much funnier in Mannequin on the Move, despite the underlying plot being arguably darker. Mannequin is all about corporate espionage and romantic revenge, all of which is done in something of a mean way. The kidnapping of Emmy as a mannequin is, overall, a pretty silly plan on the villains' parts. None of them believe she is alive, so the malicious intent leads only to what they think is stealing. Since they end up doing this right after a new security camera system was installed, it mostly makes them look like idiots for thinking this would be enough to ruin Jonathon's career in a sad, last ditch effort to put Prince & Company out of business. Mannequin on the Move, on the other hand, is the story of a man who falls in love with a woman who really has been kidnapped. Count Spretzle, due to a family legend, really does believe that the Enchanted Peasant Girl is alive and intends to steal from the royal family of a failing country. These are arguably worse crimes than setting out to steal a mannequin. Count Spretzle is something of a Cruella DeVil villain in the sense that you really need to hate him to get invested in the story, but you also enjoy watching him for his fashion and humor. He is a terrible person who feels entitled to Jessie sexually and romantically, making the situation far more disturbing than that of the first film, although Emmy is almost killed when Roxie puts the mannequins through the shredder. I doubt Roxie would really kill a woman out of jealousy, but it is confirmed that Count Spretzle will kidnap a woman and force her to be his sex slave.

What about the henchmen? After going a few years without watching Mannequin, I totally forgot that there was a stupid night guard and his bulldog in that film. He is recruited by Richards after they are both fired to help get back at Jonathon, who the guard was convinced was up to no good at night. He and the dog are a bit funny, but it's just basic slapstick. Mannequin on the Move has hilarious henchmen. The count is accompanied by three stupid bodybuilders who are supposed to transport and guard the Enchanted Peasant Girl but are really in on the count's plan to fly away with everything to Bermuda after the department store show. The real kicker is that all three look a lot like Arnold Sschwarzenegger and seem to have been dubbed over with thick Austrian accents to make this more obvious. Their stupid voices are the cherry on top.

Anyone else? Well, there are just simply more characters in the second film. Richards and Roxie from the first are a bit cut and dry, although you could argue that Roxie is bitter towards Jonathon and the mannequin because she wants someone to choose her as a warm, sexy woman rather than a doll. The only motherly figure Jonathon is shown to have in Mannequin is Claire, the owner of Prince & Company. She is enjoyable enough. In the second film, Jason's real mother gets several brief appearances and we see into her life as a matchmaker living in a big pink house with hearts on the fence. (She also plays the evil queen in the prologue; several actors were reused for fun.) Towards the beginning one of her clients comes back to tell her good news, then we see Mr. James attempting to make a dating video tape without using his actual name, and finally we see her being a sort of hovering Jewish mom to Jason. All of these moments are very funny. Mr. James is also great as the man in control at work who's really just a sad man incapable of approaching a woman in person. And there is a big cast of fun extras, smaller characters, and dancers with elaborate sets to play off of. And of course there is the amazing Hollywood Montrose who fashion is wild, whose insults are snappy, and whose loyalty is undeniable.

(All pictures found on Google Images)

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