9 To 5

Three female employees of a "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" find a way to turn the tables on him.



Frank Hart is a pig. He takes advantage in the grossest manner of the women who work with him. When his three assistants manage to trap him in his own house they assume control of his department and productivity leaps, but just how long can they keep Hart tied up? Written by John Vogel {jlvogel@comcast.net}




SYNOPSIS

The film is centered on the friendship between three women who work in the business offices of a large corporation known as Consolidated. Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) is a naïve new employee, a recent divorcee whose husband left her for his secretary. On her first day, Judy meets Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), the supervisor of her department, and a longtime employee of Consolidated. Violet trains Judy and introduces her to the department executive, Franklin Hart, Jr. (Dabney Coleman), who immediately reveals himself to be arrogant and sexist. Judy soon learns that Violet has been passed over consistently by those who could promote her, and in fact she has seniority over Hart. The third woman in the trio is the buxom Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), Harts personal secretary. Despite the fact that Doralee is a happily married woman, and Hart is also married, Hart continually makes inappropriate advances toward her, pushing her patience and tolerance to the limit. Hart has also been lying to his colleagues that hes been sleeping with her anyway, causing office gossip to go wild. The women in the office treat her rudely as a result, and initially Judy shuns Doralees attempts to be friendly.

Some time passes, and Violet is once again passed over for an important promotion, even though her ideas are good enough that Hart passes one off as his own and takes all the praise for it. Hart bluntly tells Violet that the company would rather have a man in the position, and Violet becomes enraged, storming off on her own, but not before she reveals to Doralee that her affair with Hart is common knowledge. Doralee snaps and also rages at Hart, threatening to use her gun on him the next time he makes an indecent proposal. Judy witnesses a fellow secretary lose her job over a minor infraction and she, too, becomes enraged. The three women converge at a local bar to drown their sorrows, then return to Doralees house and smoke marijuana together, prompting each of them to have a detailed fantasy about how they would kill Hart if they had the chance. Judy imagines a scenario where she hunts down Hart in the office with a shotgun, while Doralee turns the tables on Hart and sexually harasses him before roasting him alive on a spit. Violet envisions a fairy tale where she is a Snow White type character who poisons Harts coffee and sends him falling to his death outside his office window.

Things take a sudden bizarre turn the next day when each of the womens fantasies comes true in some way. Violet accidentally puts rat poison in Harts coffee, mistaking it for an artificial sweetener. Before Hart can drink it, he falls and knocks himself unconscious in his office. At first the women think that Violet has indeed killed Hart, and they embark on a wild chase to cover up the crime. Later they discover that Hart wasnt harmed at all, but their discussion about the incident is overheard by Harts nosy personal assistant, Roz Keith (Elizabeth Wilson), and Hart tries to use the information to blackmail Doralee into having an affair with him after all. Doralee loses her temper and ropes Hart with telephone wires, and Judy fires on Hart with a gun when he escapes his bonds.

With Harts wife away on a lengthy cruise, the women decide to kidnap Hart and imprison him in his own home until they can somehow get him to cooperate and forget the whole incident. Violet discovers that Hart has been embezzling money from Consolidated, and the women plan on using the information to blackmail him. The race is on to see if Hart can escape or if Violets documented proof of the scam will arrive in time. The three women work together to make Harts absence in the office as inconspicuous as possible, and along the way they take a number of liberties in improving the workplace in ways that they see fit. Hart is accidentally freed when his wife returns early from her cruise, and just when it appears as if he is going to send the girls to jail, a sudden visit from the Chairman of the Board, Russell Tinsworthy (Sterling Hayden), interrupts him. Violet, Judy, and Doralee have made some radical changes while keeping Hart imprisoned, and it seems as if the sudden surge in productivity has caught the attention of Tinsworthy. Since the women did all of it under the false approval of Hart, they can take no credit for it, but fate seems to be on their side: Tinsworthy "rewards" Hart for his good work by immediately removing him from his position and sending him to work on a special project in Brazil, much to the amusement and delight of Violet, Doralee, and Judy.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that Violet took Hart's place as vice president, Judy married the Xerox repairman and quit the company, Doralee became a country music singer (just like the actress that played her), and Hart was kidnapped by natives in the Amazon and never heard from again.