Great

What makes this a great comedy and a great film is that it has serious limitations but manages to completely transcend them. It takes a supposedly realistic approach, yet realistically no man, let alone woman, would be taken in by Hoffman's drag act for a millisecond. So it takes a realistic approach to fantastic, almost Shakespearian contrivance and carries it off, adds nauseating 80s elements, particularly the music, but still does everything it sets out to do, is genuinely funny, ground-breaking, and manages to have something to say without being heavy-handed. All in all an improbably classic. The climactic staircase scene is one of the greatest comic sequences in film history.