CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

chaswe-28402 Script, direction, players: impossible to improve upon. Reminiscent of Swift or Pope: "God and Nature bade self-love and social be the same." Cornfields and ballet, in other words. Immortal and unforgettable lines, as is the delicate question put by the spindle-polisher: "Is them your own teeth ?" The vivid terms trip off the tongue. Garadene swine. Jeropardizing wilfully. Absolute shower (filthy beast). Not properly developed ? Quite a job. Commercial intercourse. Demarcation. Do you think you're Diana Dors ? One of those horrid unions, like the Soviet Union. Revelant. No point in working for nothing. 'Ere, shut the bleeding door ! Export or die: missiles for peace in the Middle East. We have the bird by the bush in the hand. Dismissal for incompetence is totally unacceptable victimization. Up at Balliol summer school you get very good toast and marmalade.Every scene a work of dramatic art. Wonderful cameo of the benefits of Frisko. Especially great is the deft handling by Terry-Thomas, that dynamic bundle, of the Works Committee. Handl and Rutherford in perfect harmonious understanding. In the end you just feel sorry for poor old Fred Kite. He'll never have a better part to play. A masterpiece: the British converse of "On the Waterfront".

robert-temple-1 This is a breathtakingly bold and audacious satirical film which was frankly unprecedented for British cinema in the 1950s. Peter Sellers stars in a serious role, played half-straight and half-caricatured, as a labour union shop steward and 'Chairman of the Works Committee' at a factory of an arms firm called Missiles Limited. The film was written and directed by John Boulting and produced by his brother Roy Boulting. The well-know comedian of the time, Terry-Thomas, plays a scheming capitalist fraudster. Ian Carmichael excels as an upper middle class twit of unparalleled naivety and idiocy who gets a job as an ordinary worker and discovers that he loves it, leading to all sorts of class complications. He had been directed by John Boulting three years earlier in PRIVATE'S PROGRESS (1956, see my review), where he was even more brilliant. One of the best and most hilarious performances is by Irene Handl, that marvellous cockney character actress who tells everybody where to get off in no uncertain terms, and in this instance, her husband Peter Sellers (an earlier incarnation of Jeremy Corbyn). The cast also includes Dennis Price, Margaret Rutherford, Victor Maddern, the deliciously droll and hilarious glamour gal Liz Fraser, John Le Mesurier, Kenneth Griffith, and Raymond Huntley. In other words, just about everybody who was anybody in British film comedy at the time is in the film, the only actor seeming slightly ill at ease being Attenborough, who was never good at being funny. The Boulting Brothers certainly pulled this off, and the film is a famous classic. Their portrayal of corporate corruption was done with first-hand knowledge, as they were expert at ripping off their own company themselves, as I know from personal experience, when I refused to cooperate with them in a fraudulent transaction, so I do know what I am talking about. They were brilliantly talented but they were corrupt when it came to money and were quite brazen about it. So this film rips the lid off the most amazing collection of national hypocrisies, and we nearly die laughing and gasping with delight at the film's ingenuity and breath-taking boldness.

bigverybadtom The idle son of an aristocrat wants to try working for a living, but what to do? He ends up working in his uncle's factory, where he finds himself engaged in a complicated struggle between the greedy industrialists and the equally sleazy radical labor union leadership.For its time and place (1950's Britain), the movie probably was quite popular and entertaining, but the story gets too confusing in present-day America. We don't have the aristocratic class that Britain ever did, our labor unions were never quite so leftist overall, and present-day industries have little to fear from labor unions-jobs can be given to illegal immigrants or moved overseas. The roles that Peter Sellers performed, anyone could do, even if this movie made him a major actor in Britain.Perhaps a classic in its era, but quite dated and confusing today.

blanche-2 A young man (Ian Carmichael) works too fast and causes problems with the labor union in "I'm All Right Jack," a 1959 British film directed by John Boulting. Boulting actually lost a suit against a labor union. This is his revenge.Stanley Windrush (Carmichael) is from a wealthy family and, after returning from the war, he wants to be in business. It's arranged for him to work at his uncle's firm as a laborer, against the wishes of his aunt (Margaret Rutherford) and work his way up.Unfortunately, Stanley just doesn't get it. At first he's suspected of being an efficiency expert disguised as an employee, something the whole factory fears. Then he inadvertently does his job in front of an efficiency expert. It's found that he works faster than the other employees. This infuriates the union, who - again - go on strike, which they do every couple of weeks. It takes Stanley a while to figure out what's going on, but he does, in time for a television talk show.This film is known today for the brilliant performance of Peter Sellers as the shop steward, whose politics, he says, are private. He's fabulous. The film also features Terry Thomas, also very funny, and other excellent actors, such as Dennis Price and Richard Attenborough.Having worked in theater and read up on a recent Broadway strike, Boulting doesn't miss much. When Windrush asks why a bunch of men playing cards aren't working, in fact, unions often have quotas of how many people have to be hired, whether they're needed or not.Many people, of course, miss the point of unions. If people treated each other like human beings, we wouldn't have needed unions in the first place. However, "I'm All Right, Jack" understands, as Windrush's impassioned speech tells us. As long as I'm okay, I don't care what happens to you. It's an unfortunate if honest message.Don't miss this one.