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From the sparkling acting debut of Dolly Parton to the comic genius of Dabney Coleman 9 to 5 is one of the best acted comedies of the 1980s. Jane Fonda and the brilliant Lilly Tomlin round out the lead cast with hilarious performances in this screwball revenge comedies that was one of the first films to champion "girl power". Even the smaller characters like Marien Mercer (as Missy Hart)and Elizabeth Wilson (as office snitch/bitch Roz)get in good one liners and laughs. Rent this movie. No wait - BUY this movie. You can watch it again and again.

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.

"9 to 5" is a very funny movie. This is not a comedy of clever and funny dialog. And, it's only somewhat situational. But it's from the situations that it turns into one very hilarious romp. Three ladies at Consolidated have had their fill of their sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot of a boss. He may think he's hot stuff, but he's no match for Violet, Doralee and Judy.

Of course, for the comedy to work in their getting even with Franklin Hart, he has to be a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot of a boss that no one in the audience could like but would like to see the girls, er, ladies get even with. And Dabney Coleman is such a boss. He plays the part perfectly. And so do Lily Tomlin, dolly Parton and Jane Fonda play theirs superbly.

This is just a fun movie to watch. Even during the obvious moves by Hart early in the film, because one knows that he will one day get his. One of the aspects that makes this film work well, is that the ladies have fun when they coop up Hart and run the business on his floor in his absence. Rather than their gloating over his captivity, they are still humane and very human and enjoying every minute of their great coup.

The ending is very good. One might have suspected that all the changes the ladies put in place might come back to Hart's credit, but then when the chairman of the board gets in the act, the ladies - and everyone else gets their reward. The funny credits at the end are a fitting close to this entertaining flick.

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.

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.