Good characters and well acted, story explaining historical events. Worth watching in the style of the british working class film. If you like films like Brassed Off and The Full Monty you will like this.
Once again the Brits pull off a lovely piece of drama laced with comedy and very informative. The movie is reminiscent of the style of Full Monty and other similar successes. It's got a great sense of the period and really evokes the whole mentality of the repression of the female sex during that time, I loved the movie it is very funny and yet poignant also, well worth renting if you like excellent British made films!!
This film is not only dull, predictable and full of stereotypes and cariacatures, it is also inacccurate and factually wrong. It is a soppy story with a Hollywood byline to 'stand up for what you believe in'. That would be fine if it were entertainment! What annoys me about films like this is that people watch them and think they are watching an accurate portrayal of events and the time it's set. Not true at all. This is fiction. Also, it's VERY much a women's movie - though the woman I was watching it with thought it was nonsense too. It's like a propaganda piece too - and promotes the lie that women now earn less than men, which they do not, not for the same job (the average over a lifetime is lower for good reason - men do more work and take risks in the private sector more!)
In 1968, the Ford auto factory in Dagenham was one of the largest single private employers in the United Kingdom; Made in Dagenham is the story of the small spark started by the underpaid female workers of the Dagenham Ford factory that eventually led to the feminist fire that was the Equal Pay Act.
Directed by Nigel Cole, who is best known for the 2003 British hit Calendar Girls, Made in Dagenham tells the story of Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) who takes the cause of underpaid female factory machinists and brings it to the attention of the Unions, the Ford car company and the UK Government.
With Rita and the shop’s steward at the helm the women of the Ford factory go on strike after discovering that their poor working conditions are linked to a deep set ignorance and ambivalence toward women in the workplace. Rita discovers that she and the women she works with are paid a fraction of the wage of their male counterparts, solely because of their sex.
The film is undeniably interesting, the setting is excellent and the characters are very likeable. It has a real feel-good factor to it, with a light hearted and occasionally comedic tone. This makes the film very watchable and is pretty encouraging as it should help younger viewers to realise how recently such injustices were being predicated. However, it also makes the subject seem a little less serious; perhaps almost sullying the story the film sets out to tell.
Hawkins is brilliant and the rest of the girls at the factory are real characters, it is them and their personalities that help drive the film forward, rather than the arguably intense theme. There is not a great deal of time dedicated to the impact of the strikes upon the lives of the workers, small mentions to the financial strain pepper the latter half of the movie but otherwise the film dwells more in the positive and uplifting strong-undervalued-women section.