Just One of the Guys

(Lisa Gottlieb, USA, 1985)

A fascinating, spunky, little-known movie, this reverses the Tootsie (1982) idea – here a woman, Terry (Joyce Hyser), dresses up as a man to find out what the "other side" is like – and places it among teenagers.

Talented director Lisa Gottlieb – who went on to direct episodes of television's Dream On, and the features Across the Moon (1995) and Cadillac Ranch (1996) – explores, via this premise, the crazy preconceptions of both genders towards each other, and the many differences in modern manners that exist right up and down the social ladder.

Hyser's career, sadly, never really took off, but the film has several now-familiar faces: Clayton Rohner, Sherilyn Fenn and Arye Gross. Producer-writer Dennis Feldman went on to write sci-fi movies including Species (1995).

Full of delightful moments of sexual farce, Just One of the Guys also boasts a quite wonderful denouement.

It's a film to make one nostalgic for the minor-cinema (in the Deleuzian sense!) pleasures of teen movies in the '80s, when every fifth unknown film in the video store seemed a bit like this one.

MORE gender-reversal comedies: Willy Milly, Just One of the Girls

© Adrian Martin August 1990