Protocol is a 1984 American comedy film starring Goldie Hawn and Chris Sarandon, written by Buck Henry, and directed by Herbert Ross.

Sunny Ann Davis is a seemingly ditzy blonde who works as a cocktail waitress in Washington, D.C. She rents a small room in the home of a gay couple, has a lousy love life and drives a rust bucket of a car that she cannot afford to repair.

Even though she is "so broke," she refuses an offer from a patron requesting special "favors" in return for cash, as well as a loan from a waitress friend, Ella.

On her way home, Sunny is curious about the media attention surrounding a gala dinner, so she stops to watch the dignitaries leaving the event.

Michael Ransome, a Middle Eastern desk chief from the State Department, pays a visit to help Sunny get through her first press conference since the shooting.

They joke that if Sunny is to be believed, she could run for office because of her appeal to so many large groups of voters, including working women, small town folk, senior citizens, gays, the "law-and-order bunch," baseball fans, bar flies and animal lovers.

The Emir whose life Sunny saved was being wooed by the US, which wants to establish a military base in his country because of its ideal geographic location in the Middle East.

At the inquiry, Sunny cuts the proceedings short by accepting blame, having taken an important job without fully understanding the political affairs of her country.

Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "The character that Goldie Hawn creates in this movie is so refreshing and so interesting that they should have gone ahead and made the extra effort and written an intelligent screenplay about her.

"[2] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded 2 stars out of 4 and wrote that it played like a "bad sequel" to Hawn's earlier hit, Private Benjamin.

But Stewart never would have stood for all the grade-Z slapstick material here, including a truly pathetic, protracted barroom brawl scene in which an Arab stereotype (André Gregory in a humiliating role) is turned on by sado-masochism.

"[4] Variety stated, "Moving far away from the disaster of 'Swing Shift' and back toward the smash success of 'Private Benjamin,' Hawn is once again properly bubbly (and brainy), but one big problem here is an oh-so-obvious effort to reinvent the formula that boosted 'Benjamin' to new heights.

By the end, its ersatz political moralism is almost too much to take; but buoyed by Buck Henry's often hilarious script, a wiggy performance by Goldie Hawn as a not-so-dumb blond, and director Herbert Ross' sure comic touch, 'Protocol' is pleasant piffle for a Sunday afternoon.

Its most explicit borrowing is from what now seems Born Yesterday's most embarrassing scene—the dumb blond being converted to committed patriotism by reading the original Constitution and touring Washington's state monuments.