"9 to 5:" A valuable lesson over40 years later

Spoiler Alert: With Jimmy Nichols

After the death of Dolly Parton, I was distraught. Growing up, I looked up to Dolly.

She wrote and sang hundreds of songs like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” donated millions of dollars to charities and founded her Imagination Library, which gives children a book a month from birth to age 5.

However, the Queen of Country was also a star on the silver screen. One of her most notable roles, and a favorite movie of mine, was “9 to 5.”

The movie was the film debut of the Tennessee music icon and served as the release for one of her most iconic songs, which shares a title with the movie, “9 to 5.”

In an interview with The Today Show, Dolly revealed that she created the song using her acrylic nails while on the set of the film. Without her guitar, she tapped her nails to help create her number-one hit song.

The movie saw Dolly play the receptionist, Doralee Rhodes, for Franklin Hart, who was played by Dabney Coleman.

Sharing the screen with Dolly was Lily Tomlin, who portrayed Violet Newstead, and Jane Fonda, who played Judy Bernly.

The film grossed over 100 million dollars on a ten-million-dollar budget. It became the second highest-grossing film of 1980, only trailing “The Empire Strikes Back.”

The movie opens with the iconic song, showing people getting ready for the day before rushing to work. The audience then follows Judy as it is her first day at the company Violet and Doralee work at.

Violet has been working at the company for years, and she trained her current boss, Hart, before he was promoted to vice president. She has constantly been passed over for promotion, but she has another chance to climb the corporate ladder if Hart decides to promote her.

Doralee serves as the secretary for Hart but feels like an outcast from the rest of the office. This is because everyone in the office heard from Hart that she is having an affair with him.

Hart is portrayed as an egotistical, sexist boss. He knocks down pens and papers for Doralee to pick up so he can look down on her blouse.

Hart also talks down to his employees. If they are a man, he treats them with respect, but if they are a woman, he calls them his “girls” and sends them to get his coffee or run errands for him, rather than doing their job.

Violet will present new ideas for the company to implement, and he will ignore them for months before he implements them himself and takes the credit.

When Violet is passed over for promotion again because she is a woman, she snaps, yelling at Hart for being a misogynist and reveals to Doralee what Hart has been telling the office.

Violet, Doralee and Judy leave the office and go to the bar to drink. After having a few drinks, Violet finds a joint her son rolled for her to smoke.

The three go back to Judy’s apartment and smoke the joint, fantasizing about the ways they would make Hart receive his comeuppance. One way Violet imagines getting her revenge is replacing his sweetener with rat poison.

A couple of days after their smoke session, Violet is making his coffee and accidentally puts rat poison in his coffee because the box looks identical to the sweetener he prefers.

Hart avoids the poisoned drink because when he leans back to take a sip, he falls out of the chair and hits his head on his credenza. The three protagonists do not know he survived poisoning and think he passed away.

The rest of the movie is comedic hijinks with the three stealing a random dead body, returning it, kidnapping Hart to prevent him from calling the cops on them and pretending to be him at the office to keep people from being suspicious about his absence.

The humor in this movie is great, but the best part about this movie is its message. It emphasizes fighting workplace sexism and the power of solidarity.

While it was more prevalent in the 80s, women still face sexism in the workplace today, whether it is like Violet, who struggled to be promoted because of her gender, or Judy, who struggled to find a job after her divorce.

There was a female character who helped Hart keep enforcing his sexist policies, but the movie highlighted how, when women work together, they can eliminate a misogynistic environment.

At the end of the movie, Violet, Judy and Doralee have completely overhauled the department. When Hart breaks free and returns to the office, his bosses are so impressed with “his” reforms that they plan to send him to Brazil to help the company expand.

The end credits show that Violet is promoted, Hart is lost forever in Brazil and Doralee quit working to be a country singer.

Overall, this is a fantastic movie. Not only is it a hilarious movie that will have you laughing for almost the entire hour-fifty runtime, but the messages in it are still relevant almost forty years later.

If you love Dolly and have time for a good laugh, you should watch “9 to 5.”