Movie review: ‘Nine to Five’

FloridaGator80
A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

I was reminded of a really solid 1980s film called “Nine to Five” when I heard Dolly Parton’s title track from the movie recently. It had been years since I had heard either the wonderful song or thought about how good I found “Nine to Five” as a motion picture. It was an early effort to show the denigration of women in the so-called “pink ghettoes” of corporate America of the time. Unfortunately, both the issues of sexism or corporate incompetence never went away, but it remains worse that the evil of corporate America continues to reign today. Still, you’ll probably remember “Nine to Five,” so watch it again. It’s well worth your time for the acting, directing and writing.

‘Nine to Five’
(1980; 109 minutes; rated PG; directed by Colin Higgins and starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Dabney Coleman)

HE’S A SEXIST, EGOTISTICAL, LYING, HYPOCRITICAL BIGOT

(NOTE: I expanded this review and added opinion and trivia and the updating of links on Aug. 5, 2020. I again expanded the review on Aug. 26, 2026.)

Make no mistake about it that headliners Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton do outstanding work in “Nine to Five.” Each conveys her character with a pitch-perfect performance and each is worthy of a “best” award for her work. However, perennial supporting actor Dabney Coleman did an even better job as the sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot of a boss (watch the movie and you’ll see why I wrote this) who is the symbol of all things wrong in corporate life in the film.

I put Coleman’s work just a notch above the trio of great women for one reason: He had to shift gears with his character more than they needed to do with their own. Coleman had to be both hard-hearted scumbag and obsequious twerp, as he had to play out an opposite personality in the women’s fantasies of how they would “kill the boss.” It takes something to be able to get out of a hard, inhuman character that you immerse yourself in to change 180 degrees for other scenes. Coleman did it and he did it with verve.

A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

In the end, though, his work only just supports that of Tomlin, Fonda and Parton. I’m sure their effort would have made “Nine to Five” a major success, but the true quality of the film was underpinned by Coleman’s effort. BTW … “Nine to Five” is the original title of the film and you can check the notes at the end of my review about Hollywood and changing titles of films.

The little-remembered talent in “Nine to Five” is its director/writer Colin Higgins. What a wonderful job he did first writing the story and then translating it to film. Oh, there are a few stumbles (I thought it was excessive when Coleman once said “fire the bitch” to his assistant), but it isn’t easy to handle a trio of headliners and have them all coming out with the correct amount of screen time and making sure the final product is superior.

As to the story, Fonda is “Judy Bernly” and she’s a just-divorced housewife (remember those?) who is getting a job at a big corporation. Her supervisor is Tomlin as “Violet Newstead,” who is a company veteran but remains under the sexist thumb of Coleman as “Franklin M. Hart Jr” (or, FHart, as Tomlin describes him to Fonda). Parton is “Doralee Rhodes,” the buxom secretary to Coleman who is the target of his obvious advances, but who doesn’t go for it.

Through a convoluted set of circumstances from Tomlin not getting a promotion to the women believing that they’ve killed Coleman, they come together despite their disparate backgrounds and personalities. Ultimately, they’re forced to kidnap and keep Coleman isolated in his home (his wife’s away on a cruise) until they can get evidence of his perfidy in the company and use it as blackmail. He gets free, but then needs their help when all the innovations at work (most of which are common now in companies) are a success and the chairman of the board wants a report. Coleman simply doesn’t know what’s happened and can’t explain it to the chairman – but Tomlin can!

Of course, it all works out well in the end and our heroes get exactly what they want in work and life.

Here’s my look at the headliners:

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

    An Oscar nominee (not for this one) and Golden Globe winner and seven-time nominee, Tomlin all too easily conveys how she’s usually the smartest person in any conversation she’s a part of, but manages to maintain her humanity throughout it all. It wasn’t easy being “Violet,” but she makes it look that way. From having the respect of staff at work to her being a great mother at home after being widowed, Tomlin uses all her talent here. Of course, she has great comedic roots with TV’s “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and was in Disney’s “The Kid” with Bruce Willis, “Tea With Mussolini” as well as appearing in many top TV shows across five decades. I also liked her in “And the Band Played On” (click here to read my review). Tomlin is also a seven-time winner of Daytime and Primetime Emmy awards, as well as being a 23-time nominee

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

    A two-time Oscar winner and five-time nominee and seven-time Golden Globe winner and eight-time nominee (not for this one), Fonda, with “Nine to Five,” continued her charge back on the big screen after her traitorous actions in supporting North Vietnam over the United States a decade earlier. She plays “Judy” as the demure former homemaker who begins to learn the corporate way and does an excellent job in each scene. After being a louse to our country in the debate over the Vietnam war, Fonda was on a roll when she did “Nine to Five.” She was coming off three outstanding efforts (Neil Simon’s “California Suite” – click here to read my review; “The China Syndrome;” and “The Electric Horseman” with Robert Redford – click here to read my review) and then equaled if not topped them all here. I’m not going to run down her CV here, but she did win for “Klute” and “Coming Home” and was nominated five other times. She wasn’t bad, either, in “Monster-In-Law” with Jennifer Lopez (click here to read my review).

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

    A two-time Oscar nominee (for music in this one), Parton gives the performance I enjoy the most and it was her first movie role. She is affable, fun and endearing – all three qualities that are difficult to convey on screen alone, much less all together – and that’s actually what she was in real life. Parton breezes through this one and you always smile when she has a scene because you know it will be good. Parton didn’t win for “Nine to Five” since the song from “Fame” took the statue home and she was nominated for “best music written for a motion picture” for “Transamerica.” Parton has a somewhat limited list of 35 acting credits (mostly on TV) and a huge CV of music used in film and on TV. I don’t know which I like best, her title song or her work in “Nine to Five.” Parton died at 80 of cancer on Aug. 25, 2026.

And, as already noted, Coleman IS the supporting cast:

While the headliners and Coleman aren’t alone in “Nine to Five,” there really isn’t much depth to the rest of the supporting cast. Only three are notable enough for mention:

  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Elizabeth Wilson plays brown-nosing assistant “Roz Keith” and like others, does a wonderful job here. Wilson has both the nose-in-the-air attitude around subordinates and perfect obsequiousness with Coleman. Wilson couldn’t have done it any better. She was nominated for “Nutcracker: Money, Madness & Murder” in 1987 and was in the “The Graduate” as Dustin Hoffman’s mother, “Regarding Henry” and one of my favorites, “Quiz Show” directed by Robert Redford. Wilson died at 94 in 2015.
  • Sterling Hayden plays chairman “Russell Tinsworthy” and manages to make sure the small part is done right and not over-done. He gives just the correct amount of praise to the staff while managing all the while to let everyone know he’s in charge. Hayden is probably most recognized as “Capt. Mark McCluskey” in “The Godfather” (the police captain gunned down by “Michael Corleone”) and was also in “The Asphalt Jungle” and “ Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He died at 80 in 1986 of prostate cancer.
  • A promotional photo from the movie “Nine to Five.”

    Peggy Pope plays “Margaret Foster,” who’s the office drunk and her catch phrase is “atta girl!” Pope, like Wilson, is perfectly cast and doesn’t waste a second of the limited time she’s on screen. Again, like Wilson, she plays her character just right and, again like Hayden, doesn’t overplay. She was in “The Last Starfighter” and appeared in dozens of TV shows. Pope’s last acting credit was in 2013. She died at 91 in 2020.

After that, the supporting cast thins to nothing from Fonda’s ex-husband to the company president to a periphery of forgettable characters. The only one I’m not taking time to review is the actor who plays Coleman’s wife. She does a good job, but you’ve heard that too much already!

As for the creative brains of “Nine to Five,” Higgins directed only three films – the others being “Foul Play” (click here to read my review) and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” – and wrote nine including all three that he directed. I haven’t seen “Whorehouse” but Dolly’s in it and it received an Oscar nomination for a supporting actor. “Foul Play” is a favorite of mine as are two others that he wrote: “Silver Streak” with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor (click here to read my review) and the quirky cult favorite “Harold and Maude.” Higgins died at 47 in 1988 of complications from AIDS, according to IMDb.com.

Higgins’ work in “Nine to Five” goes from subtle to fall-down funny lines. In one scene where Fonda’s ex-husband finds her with a tied-up Coleman. She tells the ex that’s she’s now into “M&Ms.” M&Ms! Ah, it is nice to have a movie with both subtle and obvious humor and not just the knee-to-the-groin conflict and insults that pass for comedy today.

Finally, I’ll have to have a laugh at the use of firearms in “Nine to Five.” It was considered a liberal film of the day and you don’t get any more liberal than Fonda. However, two of the three women have guns – a huge no-no in the politically correct world of liberals. Fonda in a fantasy of hunting down the boss and blasting him with one, while Parton is completely in character in telling Coleman she has a gun in her purse and she might use it and turn him from a “rooster to a hen.” She then actually uses the gun. Funny how liberals such as Fonda can be hypocritical about firearms – I guess it’s OK for them to use them, but not others.

Sigh.

Audiences, too, thought “Nine to Five” was great as it was the second-ranked film at U.S. theaters for 1980 (it was released in December, but its 1981 sales count) with $103.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo. It was made on a budget of $10 million, according to Wiki. Sorry, but “Nine to Five” didn’t stand a chance to be No. 1. A certain sequel film called “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” took in more than twice “Nine to Five’s” total with $209.3 million. I found more than a few films from 1980 great. Here are the reviews I’ve done of films from that year:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Fonda’s birth name is spelled Jayne Seymour Fonda; Tomlin’s full birth name is Mary Jean Tomlin; Parton’s middle name was Rebecca; Coleman’s middle name was Wharton; and Hayden’s birth name was Sterling Relyea Walter.
  • Of course, the stupidity about movie titles reigns when it comes to “Nine to Five.” “Nine to Five” is the original title of the film, but because of movie posters back in the day and the apparent easier way to recognize the numerals, “9 to 5” has become the unofficial title (although it’s the official title on IMDb.com). If you want a film’s real title, just look at the original cut’s credits. THAT’s the title and here it is “Nine to Five.”
  • Plans for a sequel ended with the death of Higgins in 1988.
  • Although Parton lost out in the Oscar race for best song with the title track, she did win a pair of Grammys for it. Great tune, by Dolly!
  • Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck turned down the role of “Chairman of the Board.” That’s OK and understandable and Hayden did a good job.
  • Parton is one of 12 children and her father was a tobacco farmer.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Violet’s fantasy features Disney-like characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) (including Violet herself as Snow White), Bambi (1942) and Robin Hood (1973). The animated characters resembled the Disney characters but were obviously drawn differently for legal reasons.”
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “Dabney Coleman, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton all appear together again in the 1993 comedy ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ which was a remake of the original show.”

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Published by FloridaGator80

2 Comments

  1. Well Chuck, I see you removed my reply to your criticism of “hypocritical liberals” that pointed out conservatives’ own blatant hypocrisy in claiming to be the “pro-life” party even though they enthusiastically embrace the culture of guns, whose sole purpose is to kill. By censoring my opposing view you engaged in cancel culture, which you conservatives claim to be dead-set against, so thanks for further proving that it’s you conservatives who are the real hypocrites.

    Reply

  2. “Your new comment just goes to show that instead of finding out a fact, you draw your own incorrect conclusion to fit your agenda.”

    Like when you generalize liberals as living in a “politically correct world” and absurdly claim that they think “it’s OK for them to use (guns), but not others?”

    Having stated that, I do generally enjoy reading your reviews and will continue to do so. Take care.

    Reply

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