MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Corporate Affairs’ Wastes Its Assets

“Corporate Affairs,” which makes a stopover at one of the Egyptian’s small annex screens on the way to the video stores, is a “Working Girl” knock-off that’s tedious and contrived in the extreme. Its only interest is the opportunity it provides to see how the same actress, Mary Crosby, can be so good in one movie (“Eating”) and so bad in another.

In “Corporate Affairs,” which Terence H. Winkless directed and co-wrote with more triteness than ingenuity, Crosby is a big business barracuda vying with former flame Peter Scolari in the dirty tricks department at an investment corporation where they both work. You watch this film feeling that it’s too bad such a beautiful and poised woman as Crosby is so superficial an actress, hitting her marks precisely and going through the motions smoothly but mechanically. Then you see her in “Eating” and are startled to see what depth and freshness she reveals for that film’s writer-director Henry Jaglom.

There’s no point in unraveling the plot of “Corporate Affairs” (rated R for language, sexual situations) because it’s all too easy to predict that Crosby and Scolari will emerge from a thicket of complications with their distorted values straightened out and their love for each other rekindled. Their staunch co-stars are Chris Lemmon and Ken Kercheval.

‘Corporate Affairs’

Peter Scolari Simon Tanner

Mary Crosby Jessica Pierce

Chris Lemmon Doug Franco

Ken Kercheval Arthur Strickland

A Concorde presentation. Director Terence H. Winkless. Producer Julie Corman. Screenplay by Winkless, Geoffrey Baere. Cinematographer Ricardo Jacques Gale. Editor Karen Horn. Costumes Greg Lavoi. Music Jeff Winkless. Production design Adam Leventhal. Art director Johan LeTenoux. Set decorator Michele Poulik. Sound Bill Robbins, D.J. Richie.

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, sexual situations).