Dalle 9 alle 5... orario continuato

I never saw 9 TO 5 when it played in the theaters but saw it soon after on video. I was like 14 years old back then and I remember enjoying the film very much, even if I didn't get all the misogynistic humor and women's lib stuff. Fast forward to 2006 and I decided to buy 9 TO 5 on DVD and see the fun again. After all, I haven't seen this one on TV in a LONG time and my local BLOCKBUSTER is sorely lacking a "classics" catalog. I knew in my mind that some of the movies you hold so dearly when you're a kid simply don't "cut it" when you see them all grown up. I am very pleased to say that 9 TO 5 has stood the test of time quite well and its "it's a corporate world" underpinnings couldn't be more appropriate now a days. The movie was cleverly written and directed and the humor develops naturally without looking forced or too acted out. It's the story of recently divorced Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda). Her ex husband ran away with his secretary and now Judy, ironically, finds a job being one. The company is called Consolidated Companies, which by the way, we never really know what they do or what they sell. We only know that it is a big company and that each floor of the high building is a "division". Frank Hart (played wonderfully by Dabney Coleman) is the villainous boss and head of the division. He is, as his right hand aide might put it, an "egotistical bigot". Hart's overwhelming tyranny makes his aide, Violet, to snap and with her go Judy and Dorlee (Dolly Parton), his voluptuous personal secretary. The trio spend the afternoon together drinking and smoking pot and jokingly thinking how each of them would "kill" their boss if they had the chance. The movie visualizes each of the secretary's outlandish fantasies and this part of the movie is one of the most entertaining and hilarious. Next day it's back to the real world and back to the daily grind. From here on each of the secretaries' fantasies take real form in some way or another making the movie even more fun. You'll have to see the rest to know what I mean. Despite being a 25 year old movie, 9 TO 5 stands the test of time perfectly, with only some of the cars and some of the clothing fashion looking a bit dated. It is a very well made, fast paced comedy that never bores. My wife loved it and she had never seen it before (she was barely a year when this came out!). 9* out of 10!!!

Three miserable women (Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda) take it upon themselves to get back at their evil boss (Dabney Coleman) in this hilarious little film. Rat poison, crazy dream sequences and S&M-styled equipment are the main calling cards in this amazingly creative little comedy. Parton's title song is also strong and it received an Oscar nod in 1980. Impressive comedic fare. 4 stars out of 5.

Three female company employees wage war against their "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss in this prototype 80s sisterhood comedy, 9 TO 5 is the late Colin Higgins' second feature film and flexes the muscle of female star power which not only brings down the house, but also sets alight its box office, the runner-up top-grosser of its year, second only to STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

The Fonda-Tomlin-Parton trinity embodies three different types of career women, Fonda's Judy is a housewife grossly jilted by her ex-husband for his secretary, so she is the greenhorn in the workplace, prissy but not without wits and guts, her frilly entrance is remarkably incongruous with the rest, although her clash with the boss Frank (Coleman) is most tangential among the three, her personal victory climaxed when she blurts out to her feckless ex-husband that being dumped by him is the best thing ever happened to her.

Tomlin's Violet is a widow with a brood of four, the assertive senior office supervisor who has plodded for years in the company, yet the promotion she deserves proves to be unattainable because of Frank's sexism, and aggravated by being ordered about like a servant by him, she has every reason to get back at him; Parton's Doralee (her maiden picture, who also pens and belts out the Oscar-nominated title song), a corn-fed, bosomy secretary repulses the derogated stereotype as a boss-hunting schemer, who is indeed happily married and only humors Frank's advancement for the sake of the job, but in the face of Frank blabbering blackmail, she is the one who is not hesitant to pinion him like a steer.

Truly, the triad enjoys a real blast together, initiated by a joint-influenced brainstorm about how each envisions a scenario to vent their grievance on Frank - here Higgins makes a good fist of genre conventions, whether it is a black-white mob thriller, a lasso-tossing oater or a Snow White animation with a dark spin, all are given a reality simulacrum later in the plot - and hits the mark during their hilarious blunder with the wrong body, although the resultant kidnapping idea is less wholly engaging for its yawning implausibility, not least when the deus ex machina comes about in the form of Sterling Hayden's chairman of the board, publicly asks equal pay to be eliminated from the reform program, which is actually conceived by the triad and executed by forging Hank's signature.

Nonetheless, 9 TO 5 is as delightful and jolly as one can get in a comedy that has something to say but consciously eschews any trace of indoctrination, all three leading ladies are having a field day, but for my liking Tomlin is the one gets an upper hand for her steely nerve and comedic timing; as the antagonist, a versatile Coleman eloquently exhibits shameless wickedness to the hilt, and lastly, Elizabeth Wilson has her own moment as a brilliant tittle-tattler, who perfectly encapsulates the entire farce with a precisely uttered "Holy merde!" to bring down the curtain in the coda.

"Nine To Five" is one of those classic 80s comedies which was what made the decade so fun as far as movies go. Jane Fonda plays Judy, a recently divorced housewife who lands a secretarial job at a corporate office. Lily Tomlin is Violet, the beleagured supervisor at the office who shows Judy the ropes on her disasterous first day. Dolly Parton is Doralee, a secretary whom everyone at the office thinks is using her - ahem - "assets" to get ahead by sleeping with the boss.

Soon these three become best friends and team up after they've gotten fed up with their chauvinistic and smarmy boss Mr. Hart, played to the hilt by Dabney Coleman. Sure, it does delve into zany corniness, such as the scene where they all get high on pot and share their fantasies about how each of them would like to knock off the boss (the funniest is Violet's "Snow White" coffee one, which uses cartoon animation and live action) or the scene where Violet thinks she accidentally poisoned Mr. Hart's coffee with rat poison and tries to steal his supposed dead corpse out of the hospital! This is the kind of movie where you check your brain at the door and take it for what it is.

There are some great one-liners like the one where Fonda tells her ex-husband, who thinks she's having a kinky S&M affair with Mr. Hart, something along the lines of, "If I want to do M&M's, that's fine with me!" The office they work in is reminiscent of the one in "The Apartment". Three very clever characters, great comedic acting from Parton as Doralee and Tomlin as Violet. Jane Fonda, who I never cared much for, was good as the naive Judy. Sterling Hayden has a great cameo at the end as the "Chairman of the Board". A funny revenge comedy about Every Office, U.S.A.. You gotta love the theme song, too. Most recommended!

While watching Nine To Five, I couldn't help but think about the Billy Wilder classic film, The Apartment. Part of the plot of that film was Fred MacMurray, a more polished version of Dabney Coleman from this film who also used his office and position of authority to behave like a real pig. I thought about poor Shirley MacLaine who tried to commit suicide and eventually found love with Jack Lemmon, but both faced an uncertain future albeit with each other.

Shirley and the other of MacMurray's victims should have seen this film and taken a lesson from Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton who start as strangers and end up as allies and who find a way to get even with Dabney Coleman for using and abusing his employees.

All three women are different, different in real life and playing different types of characters in the film and at the beginning not really liking each other because they don't know each other. Tomlin is the efficient office manger who makes Coleman look good because he takes credit for her work. Fonda is a new employee who had to go back to work because her husband left her. And the beautiful and curvaceous Parton is Coleman's secretary who Coleman is trying to jump her form and the folks in the office think he already has.

But eventually these women make common cause and what they do to Coleman is an inspiration to working women everywhere.

As good as these women are the film would go nowhere without Dabney Coleman who makes a specialty of playing men you love to hate whether in comedy or drama. He's as big a sexist pig as MacMurray and a whole lot funnier.

The supporting cast has some real interesting roles as well. Elizabeth Wilson plays the office snitch and anyone who has ever worked in an office you can count yourself lucky if there are only one of those in your place of work. And they don't have to necessarily be women. I also liked Marian Mercer as Coleman's completely clueless wife. And movie veteran Sterling Hayden comes on in the end as the chairman of the board of the company who in his own earnest, but clueless way settles all their problems.

To Dolly, Jane, and Lily who took action for put upon employees everywhere, we did love you in this film.