I'm All Right Jack

1960 "Three of England's Top Comedians...One Big Laugh Riot!"
7.1| 1h45m| NR| en
Details

Naive Stanley Windrush returns from the war, his mind set on a successful career in business. Much to his own dismay, he soon finds he has to start from the bottom and work his way up, and also that the management as well as the trade union use him as a tool in their fight for power.

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Reviews

Executscan Expected more
Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
mark.waltz The old regime of English industrialism dies off as a war ends, and the new regime begins. But one must learn the business from the ground up, so what better way than to pose as a factory worker? The nephew of the head of the company goes on staff as a line worker, doubles output due to his speed, and creates disorder by simply being more efficient than the cocky vet's on the staff. Management panics as a strike is declared, and chaos ensues. The executives, advertising department, personnel management, warehouse supervisors and regular staff each get their skewering, and who better to act out all these parts than Britain's great comic stock company, which includes Ian Carmichael, Terry- Thomas, Peter Sellers, Dennis Price and Richard Attenborough, as well as a cameo by the ever popular Margaret Rutherford. As the deliciously "Dumb Dora" type, Liz Fraser steals each scene with a double dose of very noticeable attributes, simply adding a pout or a moderately funny line to pop out the viewer's eyes or gain a chuckle.While this is more a commentary on the business side of the British class system, it has certain aspects that American audiences can appreciate as well. At times, the men seem to all be speaking as if having just whiffed helium, and certain eccentricities will provide a different type of amusement for us Yanks than it would for traditional British audiences. Sellers is absolutely unrecognizable here. I easily noticed him in the opening sequence in the first of the two characters he played over his second role.
dimplet To watch this film, you would think that Britain is the center of the universe. Never once do they mention any other country, such as Canada, America, Argentina or Iceland. No, it's all about Britain, Britain, Britain (oh, and Russia). And missiles, missiles, missiles. There are lots of speeches about how important missile production and exports are to the economy of Britain (or is it England, or Great Britain, or GB, or U.K.? I do wish you UKers would make up your mind!) I'm All Right Jack is fine, if you like listening to lots of patriotic propaganda, which I, being an American, love to do. Now I can see why you Brits are always assuming Hollywood is an extension of the U.S. Department of Propaganda and Patriotism, because that's what Pinewood Studios is. I keep reading reviews by Brits complaining about how every American movie they are FORCED to watch is nothing but more American propaganda that doesn't even give credit to England for all the contributions you Englanders have made to civilization over the centuries, like inventing Shakespeare, tabloid journalism and blancmange. Well, America makes missiles, too. How come American missile production wasn't worked into the plot? And we've got unions, too. Why not have an American union official working at the missile plant as a sort of union exchange program, kinda like the role Peter Sellers had in Dr. Strangelove? Now, there's a fine patriotic American war movie that even included a Brit and a Russian in the plot, so quit complaining, England!Peter Sellers delivers a subtle, dramatic performance of the harried union leader whose wife and daughter move out, leaving him to fend for himself, with results along the lines of The Odd Couple, as his boss darns his socks for him.The movie, and in particular the television talk show, Argument, is a remarkably realistic depiction of life in Great Britain today. A rich twit (is "twit" the right word to describe Stanley Windrush? I picked up the odd bit of vocabulary from your excellent documentary television program, Monty Python) seeks fame and fortune in the noble calling of Industry, not too heavy and not too light, wanting at least one afternoon off per week. (Spoiler alert) Yet in the eyes of his co- workers and union members, he is working too hard and seems a mite worn out, so he is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to Coventry with a bag of cash, a gift from his boss and union. From this it is safe to assume that all Brits are lazy union members, except for the moneyed upper classes, who are lazy twits, and Stanley Windrush, who is a hard working, hard driving forklift driver.But no good deed goes unpunished, and Windrush dumps the cash on the table during an argument on Argument, causing a stampede in front of the cameras. He gets arrested for being a pain in the ass, which is illegal in the United Kingdom, and is sentenced to a year in a very realistically portrayed nudist colony. There, he gets chased across a field by all the pretty girls, wanting him to play with them. That's what happens to me, too, every time I go to a nudist resort. It's torture, and a fitting punishment for the evil Windrush, (spoiler alert) who dies when the union shop steward at Missiles Ltd. targets the nudist colony with a missile that fell off the back of a truck. Serves them right, too. As we all know, Brits are a bunch of preverts practicing their preversion. Have a nice day.
T Y I like me some British comedies from all over the spectrum (Kind Hearts and Cornets, Ruling Class, Python stuff, Lady Killers, etc.) but this ungodly, slow-moving plot wrings profoundly meager humor from its social commentary. At a factory the layabout socialist workers are one powerful faction and management is another. Each tries to get the upper hand, as an eager and "horrors!" productive new worker upsets the delicate balance. That's not a bad premise, but the movie is a neverending chain of lost opportunities. In the end it goes all Frank Capra when the new worker finds his conscience during a live TV show.It doesn't exactly move. At the 30 minute mark, the premise is still creakily coming together. After a very long first hour, I still hadn't even grinned once. Not only is Sellers not funny, but the script is humor free. If there are laughs in it, I'd need a team of British paleontologists to help me find them. I found this movie long and trying. 'The Mouse the Roared' is another promising comic concept executed horribly like this. If you had to watch one of the two, this is slightly more competent. A satire without a single laugh.
bkoganbing I waited until I watched Private's Progress to get a feel for these characters from where they originated before writing about I'm All Right Jack. The only question was how did at least two of the repeating characters get out of the jackpot they were left in the previous film in order to be characters here. By all rights Dennis Price and Richard Attenborough should have been doing some time in Her Majesty's jail.Price and Attenborough, along with Terry-Thomas and Ian Carmichael repeat their characters from Private's Progress. World War II is over and somehow everybody's back to where they were before, Price and Attenborough up to some nefarious scheme, Ian Carmichael still a polished, but mindless upper class twit who can't even fit in at university and Terry-Thomas just being Terry-Thomas.Carmichael is almost Stan Laurel like in his innocence about all that goes on around him. He joins the working class work force and he muddles into a situation that has the potential to destroy labor/ management relations built up from World War II and the Labour government that took power. Especially if radical union leader Peter Sellers has his way, who joins this cast and fits right into the fun.A lot of the same themes are repeated from the Alec Guinness classic The Man In The White Suit and really both ought to be seen back to back unless one wants to view I'm All Right Jack with Private's Progress. Either way it's a fun filled evening you're in store for.