‘Tootsie’ is showing its advanced age

To judge by the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest American comedies, there is apparently nothing funnier than a dude in a dress. At No. 1 in the AFI rankings (which were issued in 2000): Billy Wilder’s 1959 cross-dressing comedy, “Some Like It Hot.” At No. 2: Sydney Pollack’s 1982 cross-dressing comedy, “Tootsie.”

A case could be made that Wilder’s farce, with its view of sexual identity as a fluid construction, was ahead of its time. Pollack’s film, on the other hand, has not dated as well. Nominally informed by the sexual politics of its day, “Tootsie” (out in a 25th-anniversary edition DVD this week, Sony, $19.94) makes a show of toying with gender roles. But its ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman are at best reductive and at worst condescending.

The film’s reputation has much to do with Dustin Hoffman’s deft performance as Michael Dorsey, a neurotic New York actor, and as the bewigged, bespectacled Dorothy Michaels, Michael’s secret alter ego turned daytime soap star. Michael plays Dorothy as prim and matronly, but thanks to her no-nonsense manner, she becomes an ideal of modern womanhood for the television audience and for her female costar Julie (Jessica Lange).

The sitcom situations are rife with sexual anxiety. Michael (as Dorothy) becomes smitten with Julie, who assumes her new friend is a lesbian. What’s more, to Michael’s revulsion, Dorothy begins to attract a parade of gentlemen suitors -- much of the humor is faintly homophobic.

Lange was awarded the Oscar for supporting actress, the only win among the film’s 10 nominations, even though as Hoffman’s straight-woman foil, she’s not asked to do more than look lovely. There are plenty of scene-stealers scattered throughout the cast: Bill Murray as Michael’s wry roommate; Teri Garr, making the most of a hopeless-doormat role; Charles Durning as Julie’s widowed father, improbably smitten with Dorothy; and Pollack himself, as Michael’s incredulous agent.

“Tootsie” takes the Hoffman specialty -- the sensitive hero -- to a literal-minded extreme. Michael learns to better express himself by getting in touch with his feminine side (just as his divorced dad in “Kramer vs. Kramer” was called upon to explore his maternal instincts). But the running theme of chauvinism and female liberation is a little hard to take. There’s no getting around the fact that this movie’s idea of an empowered woman is a man in drag.