Nine to Five · reception & legacy
1980 · Colin Higgins
How Nine to Five has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A monster hit in 1980 — one of the year's top grossers, right behind The Empire Strikes Back — but critics were lukewarm about its swerve into farce; decades on it's fully canonised as the workplace-feminism comedy, endlessly cited as 'still depressingly relevant.'
What's debated
The perennial fan debate: is the second half's kidnapping caper an inspired revenge fantasy or the moment a razor-sharp office satire goes off the rails?
Its footprint
Dolly Parton's theme song outgrew the movie itself — 'workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a living' is shorthand for office drudgery everywhere — and the film's boss-from-hell revenge fantasy remains the template every workplace comedy gets measured against.
Where it stands
A beloved comfort-watch classic and a fixture of feminist-film and 'best workplace comedy' canons — the Fonda–Tomlin–Parton trio alone makes it a 'you must have seen this.'