9 To 5 (Sexist Egotistical Lying Hypocritcal Bigot Edition) (Widescreen) (1980)

Entertainment Weekly
"In this perfectly plotted paean to overworked, under-estimated, sexually harassed secretaries, the Fonda-Tomlin-Parton chemistry is divine..." -- Grade: A 04/07/2006 p.48

The Onion A.V. Club 7 of 10
He'd never make anyone's list of great '70s auteurs, but say a special prayer of thanks for the late Colin Higgins, writer of Harold And Maude and Silver Streak, and writer-director of Foul Play and 9 To 5. His scripts were soggily constructed and his comic sense was shticky, but Higgins had an innate feeling for how to make '70s audiences uncomfortable enough to laugh nervously, but not so uncomfortable that they'd flee the theater. In 9 To 5 particularly, Higgins confronted sexual inequality in the workplace, casting Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin as secretaries who get so fed up with their "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss Dabney Coleman that they kidnap and imprison him. Higgins peppers the story with some fairly sadistic slapstick and an obligatory "the ladies smoke a joint" scene, which would all be subversive if nearly every other comedy of the time weren't equally libertine...Parton is fun to watch as the bombshell everyone wrongly assumes to be the office slut, but Fonda and Tomlin play too much to type as the meek divorcee and the bitter feminist. And though it's always funny to hear Coleman mutter "Goddamn it," he's really not in the movie that much...Still, the movie is surprisingly smart about the politics of the glass ceiling, which keeps Tomlin in a pink-collar supervisor position while every man she trains gets promoted past her. The way Coleman asserts his masculinity with phrases like "cut the balls off the competition," and the way our heroic trio works together to sculpt a worker's paradise--complete with flex-time and day-care facilities--serves as an effective summary of the era's hot-button issues. But perhaps most importantly, 9 To 5 freezes forever the look of an office circa 1980, with its room-filling copy machines and Rolodexes. That's the kind of zeitgeist-check that Hollywood movies often do best. - Noel Murray
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"Nine to Five" is a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will win a place in film history, I suspect, primarily because it contains the movie debut of Dolly Parton. She is, on the basis of this one film, a natural-born movie star, a performer who holds our attention so easily that it's hard to believe it's her first film...There have been other debuts this unmistakable; you could name Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Travolta..."Nine to Five" is only a fairly successful comedy. It has some very funny moments, and then it has some major ingredients that don't work, including some of its fantasy sequences. But then it also has Dolly Parton. And she contains so much energy, so much life and unstudied natural exuberance that watching her do anything in this movie is a pleasure. Because there have been so many Dolly Parton jokes (and doubtless will be so many more), I had better say that I'm not referring to her sex appeal or chest measurements. Indeed, she hardly seems to exist as a sexual being in this movie. She exists on another plane, as Monroe did: She is a center of life on the screen...What I enjoyed most, as you have already guessed, was Dolly Parton. Is she an actress? Yes, definitely, I'd say, although I am not at all sure how wide a range of roles she might be able to play. She's perfect for this one - which was, of course, custom-made for her. But watch her in the scenes where she's not speaking, where the action is elsewhere on the screen. She's always in character, always reacting, always generating so much energy we expect her to fly apart...What is involved here is probably something other than "acting." It has to do with what Bernard Shaw called the "life force," that dynamo of energy that some people seem to possess so bountifully. Dolly Parton on the screen simply seems to be having a great time, ready to sweep everyone else up in her enthusiasm, her concern, her energy. It's some show. - Roger Ebert