Nine to Five (1980)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1980
Running Time	104:54
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Colins Higgins
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Jane Fonda Lily Tomlin Dolly Parton Dabney Coleman Elizabeth Wilson Sterling Hayden
Case	?
RPI	$26.95	Music	Charles Fox

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Italian Spanish Italian Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    There are people who seem to believe that we must judge all movies in the same way. These same people look down on movies like this one as a waste of time, or worse. Let's hope they have turned up their noses at this one and gone on to read a review of something they approve of, because I have to say I kinda like this movie. Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's got a couple of huge holes in the plot, and yes, it's more than a little dated today, but it is fun.

    This film is about three women who work in an office. It's a kind of office that really doesn't exist today, but that doesn't matter. They work for an executive called Mr Hart (Dabney Coleman) who would be drawn and quartered by the Equal Opportunities people if they got half a chance. He's a sexist, prejudiced, immoral adulterer, and that's on a good day. The three women upon whom we're focussed are his secretary, Doralee (Dolly Parton), the senior supervisor reporting to him, Violet (Lily Tomlin), and the "new girl", Judy (Jane Fonda). The first half of the film is spent setting up the situation, making it clear how unpleasant this man is, and how put-upon the women are. (Bear in mind that the film was made in 1980 — they probably wouldn't feel quite as great a need to set things up today.) The second half of the film is mostly about revenge - how he gets his comeuppance. It's a fairly silly chain of events, but they manage to keep us believing (barely) almost to the end (cue the enormous plot hole...).

    The film does hit a couple of sour notes, the most blatant of which is the slapstick scene in the photocopying room, which plays more like Candid Camera than anything else. I'm not sure why it was included, but it does undermine their (limited) credibility at putting their claim to the moral high ground.

    Do not think for one moment that this is a film with deep meaning, even if it is about social inequities. This is a film made to entertain, and it does a decent job of it.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and it is 16x9 enhanced. That's the original theatrical aspect ratio.

    The picture is softish, but clear enough to enjoy. Shadow detail is reasonable. There is a mix of low-level noise and light film grain throughout — always present, but mostly not so bad as to detract badly from the picture. The low-level noise is especially noticeable around 85:49, while the grain is fairly bad around 59:31.

    Colour is adequately rendered, but a little dull. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are lots of small film artefacts, but nothing huge. There is a lot of minor aliasing, especially on a checked jacket and some of the furnishings. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English, Italian and Spanish, plus English for the Hearing Impaired. I only watched the English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles, and they are quite good — well timed, fairly accurate, and clearly legible.

    The disc is single sided (with a nice picture label), and single layered. There's not enough content to stretch the single layer, so that's no problem.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, Italian, and Spanish. I only listened to the English soundtrack, which is Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded, although it isn't obvious why they bothered with the encoding. There's clear stereo imaging, though.

    The dialogue is easy enough to understand, although more than a few lines are obviously ADRed, sounding distinctly different in ambience. Even so, there are no obvious audio sync problems.

    The score, which is not very original, comes from Charles Fox. The theme song, played at the start and end of the film, is (unsurprisingly) credited to Dolly Parton, and was apparently written for the film.

    The surround speakers aren't noticeable — there's nothing obvious routed to the rear. The subwoofer gets nothing to do from this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The only extra is a trailer.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, but well themed to the movie.

Trailer (1:36)

    The trailer is cute, presented at 1.33:1 with a voice-over that distorts the story somewhat.

    As far as I can ascertain, the Region 1 disc is pretty much identical to this one, save that it is NTSC and this one is PAL.

    Nine To Five is a silly, but entertaining, movie given a mediocre transfer to DVD.

    The video quality is not too good.

    The audio quality is reasonable.

    The extras are negligible.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall