Just Like a Woman * (1992, Julie Walters, Adrian Pasdar, Paul Freeman, Susan Wooldridge) – Classic Movie Review 12,318

The Lodger.

The 1992 British comedy film Just Like a Woman stars Julie Walters as a landlady who falls for her personable new young American lodger (Adrian Pasdar) but soon there is a strange woman on the scene.

Director Christopher Monger’s well-meaning 1992 comedy Just Like a Woman stars Julie Walters as a landlady called Monica, who falls for her personable new young American lodger, Gerald (Adrian Pasdar).

But soon there is a strange woman tiptoeing upstairs into his bedroom at night. When Pasdar tells Julie that he is a transvestite, she understands and loves him for himself. Unfortunately, there is also a naff business plot where the lodger beats his smug racist boss (Paul Freeman) with the help of Walters.

Both leading players are personable and talented, though Walters tends to go into cabaret mode of broad sitcom acting to try to ingratiate when things get bumpy, and Nick Evans’s script, based on a novel called Geraldine, For the Love of a Transvestite by Monica Jay, falls over itself in an effort to be tolerant and understanding. So it is upsetting to find the whole thing spurious, exploitative and embarrassing.

Also in the cast are Paul Freeman, Susan Wooldridge, Gordon Kennedy, Ian Redford, and Shelley Thompson.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,318

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