9 to 5

DVD review from The Movie Snob

9 to 5 (C). This was my first time to see this artifact from the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency. It is quite the product of its time. Our protagonists are Violet (Lily Tomlin), Judy (Jane Fonda), and Doralee (Dolly Parton), who are all employees of a massive company called Consolidated something-or-other, and who are all put upon by their boss, Franklin M. Hart, Jr. (Dabney Coleman). The jokes weren't all that funny -- for example, seeing the girls sitting around and getting high on a single marijuana cigarette, or "joint," just wasn't that amusing. Nor were their various fantasies of how to do their boss in. But I was entertained by Hart's casual and clueless sexism, Jane Fonda's enormous glasses, and the sight of a guy standing in a hospital corridor lighting up a cigarette as casual as can be. And by the fleets of typewriters in view at the office. Somebody's going to have to explain to Generation Y what those things are.