The film is focused on the conflict between female office workers and a hyper-sexist boss.
Judy (Jane Fonda) gets a secretarial job after her husband left her for his secretary. Violet (Lily Tomlin) is the office manager who trains Judy and actually runs the division. Doralee (Dolly Parton) is the personal secretary of Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman), the sexist vice-president who steals Violet's ideas, spreads the rumor that he's sleeping with Doralee, treats staff arbitrarily, embezzles from the company, and constantly refers to his staff as "girls."
There is a lot of broad comedy in the film (a runaway Xerox machine, a trick chair in Franklin Hart's office, mistaking rat poison for coffee whitener, stealing the wrong corpse from a hospital, kidnapping Franklin Hart in his own house, etc.)
It's dated but fun, something you might watch again on TV if it's on. Jane Fonda in a comedic role is somewhat unusual, particularly playing a helpless, always-wanting-to-be-proper secretary against the more explicitly feminist Lily Tomlin. Dolly Parton pretty much plays Dolly Parton.
Judy (Jane Fonda) gets a secretarial job after her husband left her for his secretary. Violet (Lily Tomlin) is the office manager who trains Judy and actually runs the division. Doralee (Dolly Parton) is the personal secretary of Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman), the sexist vice-president who steals Violet's ideas, spreads the rumor that he's sleeping with Doralee, treats staff arbitrarily, embezzles from the company, and constantly refers to his staff as "girls."
There is a lot of broad comedy in the film (a runaway Xerox machine, a trick chair in Franklin Hart's office, mistaking rat poison for coffee whitener, stealing the wrong corpse from a hospital, kidnapping Franklin Hart in his own house, etc.)
It's dated but fun, something you might watch again on TV if it's on. Jane Fonda in a comedic role is somewhat unusual, particularly playing a helpless, always-wanting-to-be-proper secretary against the more explicitly feminist Lily Tomlin. Dolly Parton pretty much plays Dolly Parton.