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| | Salesrank: 225502
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| Our Price: $23.99 |
| Used Price: $23.98 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The Efficiency Expert (released in theaters as Spotswood), a warm-hearted, wacky comedy with a social conscience, takes place in Australia in the "Swinging '60s," and its character, substance, music, and design are so authentic one nearly forgets that it was made in 1991. Sir Anthony Hopkins is wonderful as Errol Wallace, the efficiency expert of the title, who devises painful belt-tightening measures for struggling companies. Wallace is hired to modernize the dotty, antiquated Ball Moccasin Factory, and he's stunned at the impossibility of the task. The cutting room resembles a workshop full of Santa's elves; the men literally dance jigs while they work. Still, Wallace takes the bull by the horns and deputizes a young man, Carey (the winning Ben Mendelsohn), to help him downsize the factory. It's like trying to disband a tribe; many of the employees have been there for 30 years; romances blossom there. Homely Wendy (Toni Colette, of Muriel's Wedding and The Sixth Sense) loves Ben, but he lusts after tarty Cheryl (Rebecca Rigg), whose nasty shark of a boyfriend, Kim, is played by a young Russell Crowe. Wallace thinks he's teaching these factory workers how business works, but it's he who learns a lesson. "Work isn't just about money," declares old Mr. Ball, the factory's owner (the exceedingly touching Alwyn Kurts). "It's about dignity, about treating people with respect. People need to make things." The movie's message has timeless resonance, as job security and pride in manufacturing vanishes from large industrialized nations. --Laura Mirsky
The Efficiency Expert Reviews:
How to find a personality by slot car racing 
2004-04-06 - Anthony Hopkins is the efficency expert. In this movie he is to decide if an old shoe factory is to be closed and the staff fired. When he first arrives, he's ready to close the factory, but as the movie progresses he finds that the workers are more useful that he first thought. As the movie progressed he moved from a man who was just as empathetic as the character he portrayed in "Nixon" to someone who actually relates to other human beings...the funny part is that a slot car race at the local club is the act that finally fosters a change in him. The movie drags in spots but I think it was done intentionally to give a laid back contrast to the hard charging but souless expert.
Mike
INTERESTING LESSON ABOUT BUSINESS, GLOBALIZATION, LIFE. 
2004-03-07 - Flawless production, coupled with sparse (which is unfortunate) musical selections of the Sixties, this unsung but gratifying little film captures beautifully the discovering/rediscovering of true, basic human needs from the vantage point of two separate generations and social classes.
With the current scourge of globalization, it strikes a very poignant chord when an "efficiency expert" (the ever versatile Anthony Hopkins) comes to investigate the dwindling profits of a small town shoe-manufacturing firm. He is occupied with cold facts and figures rather than compassion and dignity for the workers as he decides that 50% of the company could be laid off in the interests of getting the firm out of the red.
There's financial consulting, change management, resistance to change, the usual works. Then something happens that changes his perspective on his consulting recommendations, specifically a (doozy) car racing event.
In its denouement, the movie goes somewhat Polyanna (how one wishes such "solutions" were possible in the real world) but the cosy, relaxed pacing of the movie and its simple lessons make this a worthy rental.
Oh, and if Russel Crowe is the reason you're renting this, beware: he has a small part, I should have guessed this, the movie is from 1992 and he was still a budding Australian actor.
