Whoopi Goldberg Was The Original Jane Dough

The Ladies' Criterion Collection

Whoopi Goldberg Was The Original Jane Dough

3:31 pm, December 22nd | by Amy Tennery

It’s Rewind Thursday — and that means it’s movie time. Have a clip you’d like to nominate? Give it here! amy@thejanedough.com.

Thanks to popular demand (i.e. one TJD reader suggestion), we’re examining “The Associate” today, which has one of the most satisfying endings to a movie ever. (Except for “Working Girl,” which if you don’t like it probably means you have wretch of tangled nettles where your heart should be. Anyway. I digress.)

Starring Queen EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, “The Associate” lampooned sexism and racism on Wall Street to brilliant effect. If it was worthwhile in 1996, it’s sure as shoot worthwhile now (which is pretty depressing, when you think about it). Are there problems with this movie? Yes. But I can’t name another that took on discrimination in the upper echelons of the financial world and you probably can’t either (except for “Trading Places,” but that doesn’t really count). And that’s worth celebrating, even if we are 15 years too late. There’s a reason that it’s known in Sweden as “Badass on Wall Street.”

With that in mind, the movie’s end — complete with preposterous, swelling “triumph” music — is totally worth revisiting: