While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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.

Anyone who thinks Old British films are 'quaint' should watch this, one of the sharpest satires ever made. A finer film on industrial relations has never been made and I doubt could be made now in the current climate of intellectual dishonesty. The film makers do not take the easy route in blaming one party or another but holds them all up to scrutiny. The bosses, the unionists, the clients are all (rightly) shown as self motivated and cynical. Fred Kite is a character very familiar even in modern British politics (Bob Crowe still thinks and talks very much like him), with his hilariously Utopian views on the impoverished horror state of the USSR "fields of corn and ballet in the evening". The bunkum of the bosses is hardly less true and delightful to behold.

An intellectual from Oxford--so studious he has become a naive rube in the real world, and unable to find his niche in the working place--takes a manual labor position at his nefarious uncle's factory, where he stirs up a tempest with the labor relations team. Screenwriter Alan Hackney, co-adapting his book "Private Life" with Frank Harvey and director John Boulting, hit upon a certain observant ridiculousness in the British class system with his then-trenchant satire. While Hackney's targets are scattered (and obvious or dated by now), the supporting performances from Peter Sellers (well-disguised as the middle-aged labor leader), Terry-Thomas, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price, Liz Fraser, and Margaret Rutherford are certainly worth a look. ** from ****

If it hadn't been for the fact that a similar (though less cynical) film had been made just a few years earlier (THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT), I might have scored this parody a bit higher. Despite obviously being a comedy, the film is an amazingly insightful attack on the floundering state of British labor following the Second World War. While Britain used to be the most productive country on the planet, during this era they were torn apart by strikes and work slowdowns. Yet the film doesn't just attack labor unions with their unreasonable demands and poor work ethic. It also attacks factory owners who actually exploit this to their own interests. This film is obviously a loud declaration that the British Empire is in fact dead.The film begins with an upper class twit named 'Windrush' going to work for the first time. However, he really isn't cut out for management despite his Oxford education--and he seems better suited to manual labor. The problem is that after failing again and again in management, he is simply too good as a blue collar worker. This is because he works way too hard and makes all his extremely lazy co-workers look bad! And, when management documents how much work one motivated man CAN do, this ultimately results in a strike, as management wants the workers output to increase--or at least that's what they claimed. All this set in motion by a slow-witted but very decent upper class gent working as a forklift driver!! The film is very well written and clever. While younger audience members might not appreciate the film's insights, it is funny in a droll sort of way. Additionally, having wonderful actors such as Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas sure didn't hurt! Overall, sharp social and political satire that does a great job of attacking labor and management and giving insights into the decline of the British economy.

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.