Although this movie (or maybe just the title song) seemed ubiquitous in the early 80s when I was a young kid, you don't really hear people talk about it anymore and somehow I managed to never see it until now. I guess it's a "zeitgeist" film (did I get that right?), a film about a social movement that might not seem as urgent today. In 1980 this was an edgy movie, but today most the material would be tame for TV.
However, it still has some weird laughs... I enjoyed some of the dream sequences, especially Dolly Parton with the lasso capturing Dabney Coleman the "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss. My wife and I both thought that Coleman and Parton were the most fun to watch in the movie. Fonda was trapped in this ridiculous character, a 1950s housewife stereotype brought into the modern era, and she never finds her footing or does anything interesting in the inevitable scene where she becomes a "modern" outspoken woman. Lily Tomlin does some good acting (the scene where she half-heartedly resists her teenage son's offer of a joint is typically solid), but her character didn't really take off for me either. But at least she covered it up better. Parton's just having a good time and it's a bit infectious. Coleman, one of our great under-rated character actors, has more to work with her than usual. He has several different layers of nastiness, and at least one layer of sympathy.
I think the project is good, but just short of being really memorable or classic. I found the plot very thin generally, and that once the office situation and the characters had been set up so well there was nowhere up for the movie to go. The hospital sequence and the scenes in and outside of the car were tedious, and there are too many scenes of Coleman in his odd S&M getup. I would have liked to see the film maybe a bit more episodic, instead of settling into that whole story-angle about the rat poison for the entire length. Also I think the film's formula is too rigid and it ends up restricting the characters. The zany scenes clash too much with the serious scenes and it makes the whole thing feel a bit haphazard, because it's not directed with any vision that would have united them.
With the story going so far and so long into the whole hostage situation, my sympathies weren't sticking completely with "the girls." The film tried too hard to make them heroic, despite all the bizarre stuff they were doing to Coleman's character. A good example would be the big confrontation I mentioned between Fonda's character and her ex-husband (Laurence Pressman). The way I saw it, he could easily have been a sleaze.... he obviously was to some extent, because he ran off with the secretary and so on. But nothing he does or says in that particular scene is so outrageous, that we should really jump to Fonda's side and cheer when she tells him off..... as we're obviously supposed to do, en masse. Unlike in somewhat similar films about office and sexual politics such as, say, "Election" and "Office Space", the protagonists are simply right in this movie and whoever gets in their way is wrong. Don't worry too much about the details, or expect any introspection along with the character development, because this movie ultimately is about female empowerment in the most generic sense of the term. I found it fun in a lightweight way, but it was too comfy with its own assumptions and the farce was too broad to completely please me.
However, it still has some weird laughs... I enjoyed some of the dream sequences, especially Dolly Parton with the lasso capturing Dabney Coleman the "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss. My wife and I both thought that Coleman and Parton were the most fun to watch in the movie. Fonda was trapped in this ridiculous character, a 1950s housewife stereotype brought into the modern era, and she never finds her footing or does anything interesting in the inevitable scene where she becomes a "modern" outspoken woman. Lily Tomlin does some good acting (the scene where she half-heartedly resists her teenage son's offer of a joint is typically solid), but her character didn't really take off for me either. But at least she covered it up better. Parton's just having a good time and it's a bit infectious. Coleman, one of our great under-rated character actors, has more to work with her than usual. He has several different layers of nastiness, and at least one layer of sympathy.
I think the project is good, but just short of being really memorable or classic. I found the plot very thin generally, and that once the office situation and the characters had been set up so well there was nowhere up for the movie to go. The hospital sequence and the scenes in and outside of the car were tedious, and there are too many scenes of Coleman in his odd S&M getup. I would have liked to see the film maybe a bit more episodic, instead of settling into that whole story-angle about the rat poison for the entire length. Also I think the film's formula is too rigid and it ends up restricting the characters. The zany scenes clash too much with the serious scenes and it makes the whole thing feel a bit haphazard, because it's not directed with any vision that would have united them.
With the story going so far and so long into the whole hostage situation, my sympathies weren't sticking completely with "the girls." The film tried too hard to make them heroic, despite all the bizarre stuff they were doing to Coleman's character. A good example would be the big confrontation I mentioned between Fonda's character and her ex-husband (Laurence Pressman). The way I saw it, he could easily have been a sleaze.... he obviously was to some extent, because he ran off with the secretary and so on. But nothing he does or says in that particular scene is so outrageous, that we should really jump to Fonda's side and cheer when she tells him off..... as we're obviously supposed to do, en masse. Unlike in somewhat similar films about office and sexual politics such as, say, "Election" and "Office Space", the protagonists are simply right in this movie and whoever gets in their way is wrong. Don't worry too much about the details, or expect any introspection along with the character development, because this movie ultimately is about female empowerment in the most generic sense of the term. I found it fun in a lightweight way, but it was too comfy with its own assumptions and the farce was too broad to completely please me.