Konterr Brilliant and touching

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Lee Eisenberg Even if we take the cynical approach and say that Alexander Hall's "My Sister Eileen" is another fish-out-of-water movie, you can't deny that it's one enjoyable piece of work. The Eileen of the title is a bubbly young woman played by Janet Blair, with Rosalind Russell (in an Academy Award-nominated performance) as her irascible sister Ruth. The two of them move to New York to seek their fortune, only to experience all manner of unpleasant things. Whether it's an apartment visited by practically everyone, or confrontations with a publisher, there's bound to be more than a few Marx Brothers-style occurrences!I understand that the movie is based on a play, which is itself based on Ruth McKenney's memoirs of moving to New York with her sister. I figure that their experiences probably weren't as funny as what the movie, but you know what they say: comedy is tragedy plus timing. This is the textbook definition of a comedy classic. True, a lot of the material will seem dated - Rosalind Russell's and Janet Blair's clothes and hairdos just scream 1940s - but we can overlook that. This is one that you gotta see!Watch for a young George Tobias (Abner Kravitz on "Bewitched") as the landlord.

JohnD61 This is a little gem, charming and fun. While the title character is played by Janet Blair, Rosalind Russell steals the film from everyone else. She is delightful throughout. The movie has a great supporting cast who score in individual scenes but they all revolve around Russell like the planets around the sun.

SimonJack From the day Ruth and Eileen Sherwood move into their basement apartment in Greenwich Village, they have no time of their own. The two sisters left their home in Ohio to make it in New York City. That's where all the publishing houses were located. Rosalind Russell is the big sister, Ruth, who's going to New York in the hopes of making it as a writer. She was fired from the Columbus Ohio Courier for a phony theater review of her sister starring in a local stage play. Janet Blair is the young sister, Eileen, who gets to go with her parents' approval only because Ruth will be there to watch over her. And, watching over, one might think Eileen needs. She is a magnet to young men with her natural beauty and almost naïve innocence. But her charm and many attributes belie a common sense girl who, while she relishes all the attention, nevertheless is able to keep the wolves at bay. The Sherwood's apartment is also a magnet for neighbors, wolves, job interviewers, the building owner, and people just passing by on the street. Even a contingent of cadets from the Portuguese Navy make it into the apartment. And it's not Eileen, but Ruth, who draws them there. This is a funny movie of mayhem and motion. There's hardly a quiet moment in the film. Besides the crazy situations, Ruth gets in mildly caustic comments here and there about the goings on to provide some humorous dialog. All of the cast are good in their roles. The film is fun but not among the funniest or best comedies. The movie is based on the adventures of two real sisters – Ruth and Eileen McKenney from Cleveland, Ohio. Ruth first serialized her short stories in The New Yorker magazine, and then published her book by the same title in 1938. This movie just uses the last two stories in the book. It was about their growing up together and then moving to Greenwich Village. The story was made into a play, two movies, and a TV series. Judging from Ruth's biography and the stories she wrote, the two sisters and their experiences were not as lily white innocent as things are portrayed in this film. McKenney wrote other comedy works and numerous articles for several magazines. Her life was somewhat tragic. Eileen married author Nathanael West in 1939, and both were killed in a car accident in 1940. She was just 26 years old. In 1937, Ruth had married writer Richard Bransten, and they had a son a daughter. But on Ruth's 44th birthday in 1955, while they were living in London, England, Branston committed suicide. Ruth returned to New York but stopped writing. Her daughter, Eileen, said that her mother never recovered from her sister's death. Ruth suffered from diabetes and heart disease and died in New York on July 25, 1972, at age 60.

Daryl Chin (lqualls-dchin) Rosalind Russell was one of the finest comediennes in the American movies, and this in a period which saw the likes of Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn and others. Russell was a rarity: though all the others often played dizzy women, in her comedies, Russell always played smart, hard-edged career women (the exception was her first major comedy role, as the catty Sylvia in THE WOMEN).At a time when HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS is set to open, with its lackadaisical heroine pursuing a writing career as she tries to make sense of her romantic entanglements, it behooves us to remember MY SISTER EILEEN, which (when it was filmed in 1942) is the prototype, as the two Sherwood sisters (Ruth, played by Rosalind Russell, and her younger sister Eileen, played by Janet Blair) come to New York City to try their hands at writing (for Ruth) and acting (for Eileen). The slapstick annoyances, the charmingly maladroit Greenwich Village denizens (part ethnic, part "bohemian"), the stereotypical romantic encounters, all make for a charming entertainment. In the wake of the sexual frankness of HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, MY SISTER EILEEN might seem dated, but it's a lovely reminder of the wit and the humor of the generation growing up during World War II, when women were (again) finding new possibilities in the workplace, but still had the same problems finding proper dates.