Tockinit not horrible nor great

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Petri Pelkonen The Pajama Game (1957) is a musical comedy set in a pajama factory. It follows the romance of the factory worker and member of the employee union's leadership Babe and the new superintendent Sid. This movie from 60 years back has two directors. George Abbott, who lived up to the high age of 107 (!) is the other. Then the other is Stanley Donen, who is 93 now. He is the man and the master of many classics including Singin' in the Rain. His collaboration with the main star Doris Day, who turned 95 last month, works great. This great actress, singer and animal welfare activist is just radiant in the lead. And the male lead, John Raitt in the role of Sid Sorokin is terrific. They both have a great singing voice. Carol Haney is wonderful as Gladys. Eddie Foy Jr is superb as the knife throwing Hines. Other great talents include Reta Shaw (Mabel), Thelma Pelish (Mae) and Jack Straw (Prez). The Pajama Game was a positive surprise to me. I didn't even recall hearing of the movie before finding out one library had it as a DVD. It was originally a Broadway play. There are some amazing musical numbers, that are also greatly choreographed. Racing with the Clock is one great example. Or Once-A- Year-Day. Or There Once Was a Man. And the song that I was familiar with, Hernando's Hideaway. It is performed by Carol Haney and boy does it sound good! Richard Adler and Jerry Ross are behind the music. There is also a social message in the movie, with these pajama factory workers demanding for a raise, which they'd totally deserve. But most important message of the movie is you can always break into song and dance in whatever situation.

evanston_dad Musicals as a genre can afford to be about nothing, since the point of a musical is its song and dance. But even at that, "The Pajama Game" is pushing it.This ditzy, schizophrenic musical about labor relations in a pajama factory doesn't make a lick of sense. Doris Day plays the head of HR while John Raitt is the new hard-line manager. There's knife throwing, firings, a scene of attempted murder set in a creepy basement full of mannequins (yet played for laughs), and there's nary a dramatic conflict to be found. Or more precisely, there are conflicts, but they disappear without getting resolved, or they're resolved within minutes after being introduced, leaving you to wonder what the rest of the film will possibly be about.Many of the stage actors were transplanted directly to the screen, and maybe that's one of this film's biggest problems. These aren't screen actors who know how to make material work in context of a film. This musical is probably a hoot on stage, but it doesn't work as a movie at all.Bob Fosse provided the minimal choreography the film's few dance routines contain, but fans watching the movie for his touch will likely be disappointed. Still, even at that it's still his signature number, "Steam Heat," that stands as the most memorable moment, even if it has nothing to do with anything else going on.Grade: C-

cinnamonbrandy But the moral of the film (couldn't speak for the stage play) is 'steal from your employees by cooking the books to pocket their pay rise for six months! you won't be arrested! you won't be fired! you can keep six months of your ill-gotten gains! and then you can sing an up-beat number about great job you're doing! As long as your second in command gets the girl with your connivance, he's not going to make a fuss! I can see why people were ready for the sixties. 'Steal from the poor to line your own pockets', 'steal from people who implicitly trust you', 'make deals behind closed doors to stiff the female workforce' - well, they're not really tag-lines I can get behind, myself.Bring on North Country.

Ephraim Gadsby Can Stanley Donan end a movie? Two classic movies he directed, "Charade' and "The Pajama Game" end so abruptly it's almost like he has them on a stopwatch and simply decides to cut them off with a cleaver.Otherwise, "The Pajama Game" is a dandy diversion. The Broadway hit hosts a handful of great songs ("Hey There", "I'm Not at all in Love", "There was a Man", "Steam Heat" and "Hernando's Hideaway" have all become standards). The movie might be a little too stagy. About half way through it opens up about at a picnic with the less famous, but energetic number "Once a Year Day" where choreographer Bob Fosse has his dancers in a park performing all sorts of tricks on what appears to be uneven ground. Otherwise, the movie is a little too aware of the proscenium. The pajama factory is far larger than it could have been on stage, but it looks like a set.The "Hernando's Hideaway" number has STAGE is stamped all over it, but it's the most effective number in the movie.Many actors are recreating their Broadway characters. The big replacement is Doris Day, a proved movie performer who does well in a new role. The male lead, John Raitt, reprises his Broadway role. Male lead Raitt has a good voice and sings well in a duet with himself in "Hey There"; but he's so stiff he might have played the Commendatore in Mozart's Don Giovanni before he came to life. He desperately needs Day's inestimable charm to pull him through as well.The second leads, Eddie Foy Jr. as Vernon Hines and Carol Haney as Gladys Hotchkiss, are both pros able to translate their practiced Broadway performances to the screen with new energy. Their parts are truncated from Broadway, and this is a good thing: with their energy they'd have swamped Day and Raitt and it would have become the Gladys and Hinesy show. Although, from what I understand, the excisions mean that Hines comes off as unreasonably (maniacally, even) jealous of Gladys, if these two were allowed any more to do in this picture Day and Raitt might as well have stayed home and phoned in their lines.The plot – based on Richard Bissel's slight novel 7 ½ cents, about a labor dispute at a pajama factory, is of no interest. The workers themselves don't even seem to care about the story until it raises its head again as a convenience. The story is simply a clothesline to string up a collection of great songs.There's nothing here for anyone with a low threshold for musicals. This is no treatise on arbitration. It's a fun romp through romances in a pajama factory with lots of singin' and dancin' and knife throwin'.