Away from the offices of Consolidated Industries, three secretaries (Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin) spend a night sharing a joint while entertaining fantasies of killing their chauvinist boss (Dabney Coleman). When one of them panics the following day because she suspects she’s really poisoned the tyrant, the trio respond by abducting him and running the business themselves. 9 TO 5 went on to be adapted as both a TV series and a Broadway musical, while launching Parton — already an established singer/songwriter — into a permanent icon of pop culture. “Atta Girl!”
“[Dolly Parton] is, on the basis of this one film, a natural-born movie star, a performer who holds our attention so easily that it's hard to believe it's her first film. There have been other debuts this unmistakable; you could name Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Travolta. And what you'd be talking about in each case would not necessarily be a great dramatic performance in an important movie. You'd be talking about a quality of presence, a personal life force that seems to take over the screen.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Dec 19, 1980)