Comment se débarrasser de son patron

This has to be a true classic movie for anybody. Parton, Fonda, Tomlin play the three main characters set in a big business office block, "Consolidated". Dolly Parton is excellent, portraying the country girl, Jane Fonda as the divorced housewife's first job role, and Lily Tomlin as the bosses stepping stone. The film is full of one line crack jokes which can be missed on the first time you watch it. Do watch the movie a few times, and soon you'll pick up on how funny the lines are "Violet, did you get my Memo?", "I did Roz, I tore right through it".

Later in the film the plot is well underway and animation is combined successfully with Tomlin's scene of a Snow White type character!

I loved this film, and my laserdisc copy is always on the top of the pile. A good all rounder to be watched over and over, and I sometimes find myself using those punch lines.

Dolly Parton provides the "9 to 5" opening music, which sets the movie off to a good pace.

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!!!

I'll take the blame for this: not only am I forty years late to the party, but I'd also underestimated the star power of Dolly Parton; a natural performer who's integral to the success of this movie. On its own, 9 to 5 is a decent comedy, led by the more-than-capable Lily Tomlin, but Parton infuses her scenes with a bubbly independence that really helps sell the feminist message. Dabney Coleman is the consummate company sleaze, the tinpot schemer helming this faceless conglomerate; ideal for the target of such a workplace revenge fantasy.

In less capable hands, this may have fallen flat. But I enjoyed myself and have a newfound (overdye) reverence for The Queen of Nashville.

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.