1980: "Nine to Five"

                                                 Nine to Five is an 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton as three office workers who suffer working under their sexist, asshole boss (played by everyone's favorite sexist authority figure, Dabney Coleman). Through a series of wacky misunderstandings, they try to undermine their boss as revenge for his treatment towards them.

                                               I might sound like a dour curmudgeon who is not forgiving of breezy workplace farces, but I did not enjoy the film. As a comedy, it's not terribly funny. Although I won't deny that it has a bubbly energy and the three leading actresses are charming (and I can understand people liking it based on that), but I found it tiresome, especially when it gets to the second act. My understanding is that Fonda wanted to make a movie about women workers. Originally, it was supposed to be a feminist drama, but Fonda wanted to avoid any soapbox leanings, so they made it a comedy. It's like they had the environment and the message firmly in place, but no actualization of what they wanted to do with the material.
                                              The first act does have some decent character development (Fonda's divorced, Tomlin's a widow with three kids, Parton's the poor secretary who is looked down upon as the office whore). The movie at least tries to give us a sense of our character's motivations for their disgruntledness. But when it gets to the second act, with Tomlin thinking she accidentally poisons Coleman, that's when the movie turns into a convoluted farce, with corpse-stealing, and embezzlement, and blackmail, and scheming, and office reform, and finally culminating with Sterling Hayden (the movie's deus ex machina, since the movie has no idea how to end this stalemate between the women and Coleman) showing up to send Coleman to Brazil as a promotion (which ends up being his punishment).
                                            And the whole situation is not charming or engaging, just....petty. Three women hate their boss. Well, yeah, we all hate our bosses, right? Just quit and find another job. Or tell Human Resources and have them fire his ass. I don't know. Did we really need an hour and fifty minutes of this?

                                        I don't know, skip it.
                                       

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