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Honestly, I didn’t expect much from this flick but somehow, I still ended up watching it. Basically, it is the old gimmick of someone magically switching bodies (this time, a notorious womanizer becomes a woman). Personally, except for ‘Big’ which was still nothing great, I don’t think I enjoyed any other movies in this genre. Obviously, the premise is ridiculous and the trick is that the makers have to make sure that either the main character and/or what he/she is going through is really compelling to watch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really the case here. First of all, even though Roger Ebert thought that Ellen Barkin delivered a strong performance, I didn’t agree. Especially in the first scenes, right after the transformation, she definitely behaved and sounded like a woman and not as a man trapped in a woman’s body. Later on, she became more convincing but the whole struggle with the high heels became old very fast. Furthermore, even though they tried to make it darker than the usual flicks in the genre, they still chickened out with some key scenes. I mean, why didn’t Samantha/Steve have sex with Sheila Faxton? There was no real reason why not, except that it was apparently ok to seduce a rich lesbian woman to get a contract but there was no way they would show a gay love scene in a mainstream comedy. Same thing with Walter. Indeed, would it be ok for Samantha/Steve to have sex with Walter who was Steve’s best friend? Again, a rather intriguing situation but they didn’t dare explore it so they have sex but it is off-screen when they were both extremely drunk so they never really had to face this situation. Anyway, to conclude, it was rather weak comedy and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

Ellen Barkin plays a man who comes back from the dead into a woman's body... hers!

She does an excellent job expressing her masculine side. She is very convincing. It becomes easy to set reality aside and go with the flow believing that she really is a crude man trapped in that voluptuous body and doesn't know how to care for it or move in it. And to make matters worse his/her best buddy, Jimmy Smits, keeps hitting on him/her. Well acted.

If you want some good laughs, give this one a try.