Nick Reviews “Nine to Five” (1980)

Read my review on Letterboxd

Starring the lovely trio of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, this film very intelligently discusses gender struggles, and even 40 years later still has a lot to say.

Our leads provide perfectly proficient acting, with a particularly remarkable amount of charisma on the part of Dolly Parton, and the dialogue is especially witty.

The major flaw of the film is that it has a very good thing going for it in the first act, but by the second act it flies so far off the rails that it loses me. We start with three women in an office setting lamenting about the inequity of the environment, but end up finding them stealing a dead body from a morgue. The movie then has the tall task of settling the chaos in the third act, which it manages to do, but only barely.

Even with that somewhat fatal flaw, the movie managed to make me laugh, and also made me think, which was ultimately the goal.

I don’t say this often, but Nine to Five would greatly benefit from a modern remake, told by modern women for a modern audience.

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