Comment

Oct 16, 2014
I was 22 and just starting my first adult job (at Playboy Enterprises, yet) when this movie hit the theaters. From a distance, I wasn't sure what to make of it; the reviews were decidedly mixed. It was sharply criticized by some for its comic, slapstick treatment of issues American culture was just beginning to take seriously: institutionalized sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace--what working women everywhere used to call "life." On the other hand this was a mainstream studio film being released at the dawn of the Reagan Eighties; the gloss of comedic silliness was perhaps the only way to get the movie made. Politics and equality issues aside you can still enjoy "9 to 5" for the marvelous chemistry between the three leads: Dolly Parton (in an impressively self-assured film debut as the smarter-than-she-appears office sex-bomb), Jane Fonda (appealing as a naive 30-something divorcee nervously entering the workforce for the first time) and Lily Tomlin (the super-competent, wise-cracking corporate survivor and single mom) as coworkers trying to survive a sexist, egotistical jerk of a boss (the reliable Dabney Coleman, who is both hilariously funny and disgustingly self-serving) and make a fairer, better life for themselves and their fellow workers. I sure did. My favorite moments were and are the after hours dinner where the three women bond over great barbecue, mutual frustration with Coleman, and a shared doobie; and the zany hospital ride when Tomlin is convinced she has accidentally-but-maybe-on-purpose poisoned the boss ("I'm gonna get the chair! I'm gonna lose my job!" she wails.)