My Favorite Movies: 9 to 5

Image from source, Wikipedia

On a grocery run for The Other Half, I picked up a box of "the pink stuff," aka Sweet 'N Low. Yes it's saccharine, supposedly responsible for the death of countless laboratory rats. And the two things always get me to thinking about the classic 1980 movie, 9 to 5.

If you're too young to remember (or live in a pop culture void), 9 to 5 stars Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dabney Coleman. It is a workplace revenge comedy, with a "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot" boss, and the three put-upon ladies who are his undoing. And in the film, a confusion between artificial sweetener "Skinny 'N Sweet" and "Rid-O-Rat" spins the revenge fantasy part of the film into motion.

9 to 5 is one of those films I can watch over and over again, probably at least once a year. It is in elite company among my many DVDs, along with Terminator 2, What's Up Doc? and Aliens (how is that for a combo?). All of those films are in regular rotation at my house. But finding legal clips of these films to post on my site is a little tricky. What I did find is a link to American Movie Classics (AMC), which has a brilliant "movie in a minute" montage clip that condenses the whole movie down to sixty seconds. You can find it here: 9 to 5: Movie in a Minute

This was Dolly Parton's first--and by far best--film. I wonder if her freshness to movie acting was as big an asset as her. . .um. . .assets. Because she never came off this warm and genuine in any other film. Oh, and hilarious. Favorite line: "I got a gun out there in my purse. . .I'll change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot! Don't think I cain't do it!" Closely followed by, "Well I say we hire a couple of wranglers to go upstairs and beat the shit out of him!"

Lily Tomlin is one of my favorites, and has a very funny role too. Jane Fonda is a great actress, though she was never in my top 10. But the movie wouldn't be the same without her. Dabney Coleman--who always seems to play a jerk--does not disappoint here. It's a shame they never regrouped for a sequel, though that may have been prevented by resolutions that were captioned for each character at the end of the movie--a coda the film could have done without.

If you haven't seen the film in a while, check it out again. You'll laugh yourself silly, and you'll marvel at what an office looked like in 1980 (Smith-Corona Typewriters, Dictaphones, Rolodexes and NO desktop computers).

Since I cannot display a legal scene from the film, how about this?

UPDATE: Just found this! Believe it or not, this is the original movie trailer. It is hilariously dated (far more so than the film), and features almost nothing of the original film. They sure don't do trailers like this anymore, thank goodness.