Cast: Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Getty, James Spader, G.W. Bailey, Carole Davis, Steve Vinovich, Christopher Maher, Meshach Taylor, Phyllis Newman, Phil Rubenstein, Jeffrey Lampert, Kenneth Lloyd, Jake Jundef, Harvey Levine, Thomas J. McCarthy, Pat Ryan, Glenn Davish, Steve Lippe, Lee Golden, Vernon R. DeVinney, Olivia Frances Williams, Charles Lord, Ben Hammer, Jane Moore, Jane Carol Simms, Judi Goldhand, Lara Harris, Dan Lounsbery, Kitty Minehart, Katherine Conklin, Andrew Hill Newman, Bill Greene
Forty-five centuries ago, in Egypt, Emmy Hesire (Cattrall) resists her arranged marriage. She prays to the gods to join her true love. Emmy vanishes from Egypt and in episodic jaunts through the future meets several interesting men, but finds no true love. In present-day Philadelphia, Jonathan Switcher (McCarthy) works as a sculptor in a mannequin factory. He’s making minor changes to a mannequin he’s been working on for a while. His boss tells him he should mind quantity more than quality. When Jonathan objects, he is fired. Jonathan finds employment elsewhere, but finds it difficult to curb his artistic temperament and ends up getting fired. Adding to his misery, Jonathan’s relationship with his beautiful but unsympathetic girlfriend, Roxie Shields (Davis), deteriorates. One evening, when something goes wrong with his motorcycle, he’s on foot in the rain when he notices the last mannequin he created on a Prince and Company department store window. Unable to get the mannequin off his mind, Jonathan returns to the same store the next day. His quick response in an emergency helps him to save the life of the store’s owner. The grateful owner, Claire Prince Timkin (Getty), offers Jonathan a job. Starting work at Prince and Company, Jonathan meets Hollywood Montrose (Taylor), the flamboyant head window-dresser. When Jonathan finds the mannequin he created, he is astonished when it comes to life. The mannequin becomes Emmy. She tells Jonathan who she is, but he thinks he’s dreaming or hallucinating. When he wakes up in the morning, Jonathan finds himself in a store window displaying sports wear. The imaginative window display attracts the attention of passers-by, and soon shoppers begin to stream into Prince and Company. Claire attributes the uptrend in business to Jonathan’s creative window displays. She resists suggestions from Mr. Richards (Spader), a key Prince and Company executive, that she sell the store to her principal competitor, Illustra. Jonathan reluctantly accepts Emmy’s reality. Working alone at night, the two develop attention-grabbing window displays, causing the store’s floor traffic and sales to markedly increase. Jonathan’s night escapades arouse the suspicions of the store’s security officer, Capt. Felix Maxwell (Bailey). Accompanied by his dog, Rambo, Felix begins to track Jonathan’s nighttime movements. Jonathan and Emmy avoid discovery of her secret because she only comes alive when alone with him. To others she is just a mannequin. Roxie, Jonathan’s ex-girlfriend, meets him for lunch and offers him a job as head window dresser at the store where she works, Illustra. But Jonathan likes working at Prince and Company and is not about to jeopardize his special relationship with Emmy. Roxie is furious when Jonathan declines her offer. Curious about Jonathan’s activities, Roxie breaks into Prince and Company at night and discovers Jonathan passionately embracing a mannequin. She assumes Jonathan has become insanely fixated on a window model and schemes to use this information against him. Claire fires Mr. Richards, who has been paid by Illustra to persuade her to sell out to them, and promotes Jonathan to Prince and Company vice-president. In a frantic attempt to neutralize Jonathan and gain control of Prince and Company, Illustra operatives Roxie and Mr. Richards, aided by Felix, concoct a plot that places Emmy in extreme jeopardy. Having found his true love in Emmy, Jonathan strives desperately to save her. The soundtrack includes the song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship. Screenplay by Michael Gottlieb and Edward Rugoff.
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