On Screen

...Flash Gordon does both...

...the minimal action-space ships flying and docking, bird men soaring, a midair battle—could have been filmed circa 1940...

...The sets resemble something out of a wartime MGM musical...

...the pointed nose of a gigantic phallus-shaped rocket ship penetrates a man's body...

...The conflict is so artificial that we cannot participate in it vicariously...

...There are the office lush, the token Hispanic typist and black mailroom clerk, the officious administrative assistant, and the buxom blonde—Hart's personal secretary, Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), whom the rest of the workers suspect of rising through the ranks by lying on her back...

...Finally, we are privy to Violet's comicbook dream, including Disney-like cartoon figures, starring her as a Snow White-like princess who poisons the evil oppressor Hart...

...On Screen SECRETARIES AND EARTHLINGS BY ROBERT ASAHINA A JL JLnyone who has worked in an office knows there is a rich potential for comedy in the politics, gossip, back-stabbing, careerism, and petty totalitarianism of most organizations, both large and small...

...Doralee is as fed up as they are with the system, and the three become comrades-in-arms...

...Then we watch Doralee's vision of role reversal, with her as the boss and Hart as the secretary, whom she literally hogties...

...Ming's palace, bedecked in bright red and gold, under a sky that is a mixture of bright blue and pink clouds, looks like a brothel designed by acrazed interior decorator with an unrestrained taste for kitsch and a limitless budget...

...Sure, he's saving Earth from destruction, but because the threat is unbelievably silly (Ming is going to blast Earth to smithereens after subjecting it to a variety of improbable disasters, including "hot hail," whatever that is) Flash's heroism is correspondingly reduced...

...just recall Lucille Ball's antics with Gale Gordon...

...One can only pity von Sydow and Peter Wyngarde (who plays Klytus, Ming's henchman...

...Violet and Judy soon discover, however, that they have misjudged her...

...Its perspective on sexual politics in the of fice is crude and uninstructive...

...Soon their fantasies perversely become reality as the film drifts further and further from verisimilitude...

...Any boss in a major corporation who behaved as he does would quickly be dragged into court...

...Most of the story takes place on the surface of the various satellites of Mungo...

...But if that was his motive, he should have made it clear to his director (Mike Hodges), his screenwriter (Lorenzo Semple), and especially his costume and set designer (Danilo Do-nati) that no movie of this kind can succeed by condescending to its material or its audience...

...Moment by Moment, was equally egregious...

...I can't imagine that Nine to Five will do anything to advance Tomlin's career, and, indeed, she should be worried, since her previous film...

...Hart, still alive, tries to blackmail them for their attempted murder, but Judy shoots at him with a gun that has been implausibly planted in the story, and Doralee ties him up with a telephone cord...

...They are pretty ridiculous, too...

...Tomlin and Fonda have let their political commitment overcome their probably limited good sense...

...From the very beginning, it is clear that the entire cast is having a tough time keeping a straight face, including the wooden nonentities playing Flash (Sam J. Jones) and Dale Arden (Melody Anderson...

...And for all that the producer, Bruce Gilbert, acknowledges the "help and encouragement of Working Women, the National Association of Office Workers," the film has as little to do with feminism as it does with comedy...

...The women, when they are not clad in diaphanous gowns, wear skintight, head-to-toe black leather outfits...

...The combination of garish sets and costumes and kinky sexualized violence results in a self-conscious decadence that reveals how little the filmmakers' minds were on the story and characters...

...In any event, along with the three "pathetic earthlings," we are thrown into a world where the men sport headdresses, studded arm bands, thigh boots, and gold lame jockstraps...

...There the film quickly loses control...

...Following a brief introductory sequence on Earth, Flash and Dale, and Dr...

...It begins with the arrival of a recently divorced and obviously pampered housewife, Judy Bernly (played by Jane Fonda), for her first day of work at her first job as a secretary/typist in the huge, impersonal offices of Consolidated Companies...

...In the process, gags and stunts that would have been old hat 30 years ago are dusted off and shamelessly flaunted...

...We see, at length, Judy's dream of stalking him through the office in the fashion of a big-game hunter, complete with safari hat and bush jacket...

...The problem with Hart is not that he is sexist but that he is simply incompetent and stupid, even in sexual matters...

...Such bizarre irrelevancies make one wonder what the filmmakers' intention was...

...Unfortunately, Nine to Five, directed by Colin Higgins from a script he wrote with Patricia Resnick, fails to capitalize on the promise of the material...

...Ultimately, the three of them imprison Hart in his own home and take charge of the office in his absence...

...De Lauren-tiis has done the impossible—with Flash Gordon he has laid a bigger egg than King Kong...

...Hans Zarkov (Topol), are transported to the planet Mungo, ruled by the Emperor Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow, of all people...

...If Nine to Five has a feminist message, it is lost because the villain and particularly the plot can be dismissed as unbelievable...

...Why Dino De Lauren-tiis decided to give us a new version of the adventures of the outerspace hero once played by Buster Crabbe escapes me...

...The film has been hailed by Ms...

...w ? ? ith Flash Gordon the case is somewhat different: satire lapses into self-satire...

...Strewn around the vast, sterile company headquarters is an array of recognizable office types that verge on being racist as well as sexist cliches...

...In addition, thenotionof smart secretaries outwitting their bosses is hardly new, liberating or amusing...

...It is hard to know what audience this loser is aimed at...

...To cap things off ridiculously, in the end Hart gets his just deserts, and our feminist trio's stabs at "liberating" their company are rewarded...

...No adult will be able to stomach its inanities, and children will be put off by its campy tone as well as puzzled by the leather accoutrements...

...I suppose they needed the money...

...and two men battle on a giant disk studded with the outerspace equivalent of punji sticks...

...Violet thinks that she has accidentally poisoned Hart, and a madcap scene ensues at a hospital, where the three secretaries steal what they believe is their boss's corpse to cover up their supposed crime...

...From then on, the film is a peculiar combination of slapstick and ideology-mongering...

...In Star Wars, the war between the Rebels and the Empire, though no less fantastic, was at least emotionally engaging...

...Even if he were not continually forced by the script into baring his beautiful beach-boy's body, or playing a laughable game of football with a bunch of aliens in drag, or wearing his blond locks blow-dried in a silky flip, this Flash Gordon still would not be much of a hero, except to jock fanciers...

...He's tied up at the moment," Doralee truthfully tells someone calling her boss, who at one point is bound in a studded leather and chain contraption that looks like an S-and-M freak's dream...

...One is left to presume that what started out as satire degenerated into slapsick for perceived commercial reasons...

...Instead of inventive illusions, we are offered thrills of a different kind: a woman is strapped face down on a bench and whipped by another woman...

...Curiously, the special effects are considerably less spectacular than the costumes and sets...

...Feminists should be appalled by this odious and obnoxious comedy...

...Fonda's reputation as an empty-headed activist is sadly borne out here...

...After about 20 minutes I grew impatient, wondering whether Higgins and Resnick could elevate the story out of made-for-TV-land...

...The first indication that they couldn't came when the trio, angered by the latest indignities inflicted upon them by Hart, fantasize about revenge under the influence (unbelievably) of marijuana...

...Perhaps he thought he could capitalize on the interest in science-fiction and fantasy that made George Lucas' epics such hits...

...She learns the ropes from her cynical supervisor, Violet New-stead (Lily Tomlin), a veteran staffer who has been passed over for promotion to management while the men she has trained, including her and Judy's lecherous boss, Franklin Hart Jr., have quickly f ound their way up the corporate ladder...

...Add to this the sexual relationships, harassment and exploitation that can fester when men and women are thrown together for 40 hours a week, and the result could be an entertaining contemporary satire with a serious edge...

...At least von Sydow is heavily made up, and Wyngarde wears a mask throughout...

...If anyone shows up, that is...

...magazine, a further demonstration of how ideology eclipses good taste...

...Here, everything is bound to encourage snickers of embarrassment...

...Under the secretaries' control, Consolidated institutes flexi-time, day care for workers' children and affirmative action...