Molly Haskell

“Nine to Five is the biggest disappointment [among The Competition and Altered States], because it unites a promising idea—revolt among the secretaries—with a powerhouse of talent in the front lines. If Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton can’t light a fire under the collective arse of upper management, who can? Trouble is, their target is not the corporate elite, but a punier one: a pompous, middle-management desperado… Funny as [Dabney] Coleman is, his character is hardly worth the ammunition expended on him. 

“The hilarious opening scene contains intimations of what might have been. We and neophyte secretary Jane Fonda are introduced to the scene at Amalgamated, Inc. through the jaundiced eyes and squashed hopes of veteran office worker Lily Tomlin. In a voice rustling with the acid of twelve years of office intrigue, Tomlin says of boss Coleman, 'He used to be a trainee… I trained him!' And when snippy section manager Elizabeth Wilson gives her yet another memo on desk decorum, she cracks, 'I know just where to stick it.' The tension between Tomlin and Fonda, and between both of them and Parton as the voluptuous boss’s pet, seems both funnier and more accurate than the instant camaraderie that develops when they smoke a joint, and share fantasies of murdering the boss. 

“…. Even in more sensitive hands, or with a better screenplay…, I suspect the three stars would not have meshed into a team…. In the space between [Fonda] and [her] character there is the sort of condescension one never feels in Tomlin’s white-collar weirdos, the switchboard operators and spinsters whose tics and obsessions she registers with such affectionate bite. 

“If Tomlin’s spirit had prevailed, we might have had a comedy with some sting instead of one whose idea of feminist victory is to turn the office into something resembling a Castro Convertible showroom….” 

Molly Haskell, Playgirl, April 1981