Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

"My Sister Eileen" was a play, (taken from some short stories), and then a film with Rosalind Russell that became the Broadway musical "Wonderful Town" with a score by Leonard Bernstein together with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which also starred Russell. The musical film of "My Sister Eileen", however, is not a screen version of "Wonderful Town" but an original screen musical with an entirely new score by Jule Styne and Leo Robin. Personally I could never see what was wrong with "Wonderful Town" and no film directed by Richard Quine had me rushing off to see it which may be another reason this film has passed me by until now. Surprisingly, it's really rather pleasant. The stars are Janet Leigh, Betty Garrett, Jack Lemmon and Bob Fosse. Garrett was, of course, a welcome addition to any musical while both Leigh and Lemmon were always welcome additions to any film. As for Fosse, it's great to see him in a proper role and in front of the camera for a change while his choreography is, as ever, a treat, (watching him dance is one of the pleasures of musical cinema particularly when his partner is the wonderful Tommy Rall). The script was co-written by Quine and Blake Edwards and it's good enough to make you wish that maybe Edwards should have directed, too. It's certainly not the greatest musical to have come out of the fifties, (or anywhere close), but it's entertaining in its own innocuous way.

Other comments on this site seem to love this 1955 Columbia musical, but I just didn't. I have an LP of the celebrated stage musical Wonderful Town with Rosalind Russell which is the source material for this film. As with ON THE TOWN (also with Betty Garrett) the studio tossed out almost all the songs and wrote new ones. Unfortunately he new ones weren't better than those deleted... in both cases. Wonderful Town has memorable and lively and wistful songs. EILEEN is a wallflower instead... in every way. Whereas ON THE TOWN succeeds by virtue of stellar MGM cast and other dance talent, MY SISTER EILEEN has non musical talent in the leads (Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon) with superior talent relegated to the second ranks: Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall. As with Columbia's other 1955 musical travesty THREE FOR THE SHOW which slavishly turned every glorious snazzy Fox Marilyn Monroe musical number into a tubby spandex imitation version with Betty Grable (!) EILEEN clearly visually copies a lot of the set decor and costume design Garland enjoyed in A STAR IS BORN from 1954. Some of Garrett's outfits are copies seen in the famous surreal "Born In A Trunk" number. Finally, the apartment block set is right off the same plan as seen in REAR WINDOW... all as if Columbia clumped together ideas gleaned from those other successful films and like a ball of musical plasticine released their second big cinema scope musical called MY SISTER EILEEN. The male dance leads: Fosse and Rall have one truly sensational acrobatic number together, set in an alley... It is really the highlight of the film. ... On the real downside, Betty Garrett and Leigh are just not believable as sisters. Garrett, as wonderful as she is, just looks too old, like her Aunt instead, a generation ahead of perky Debbie-style Leigh. Beyond all that bewilderment, the characters of the girls are just plain dopey. I get naive, but these two are basically whiny and not very smart. MGM's B musicals ATHENA and I LOVE MELVIN and SMALL TOWN GIRL, all produced the year before are far better than this A grade Columbia attempt. And I love Betty Garrett and Jack Lemmon. A proper musical version of WONDERFUL TOWN awaits us all and if ever produced as written and scored will prove my comments to be hopefully more correct than wrong. I wanted to like this film a lot and was ready to, but the obvious plagiarism of production, the wrong casting and the fact I know the source musical to be excellent, makes Eileen fall over. I will avoid commenting on the goofy embarrassment of Dick York, the butch neighbour with the spunky fiancé, a spin on the horny newly weds across the courtyard in Rear Window.

"Singin' in the Rain" seems to be everyone's favorite musical and I can understand why. It's undemanding, funny, has great songs, a fine book, and superlative dancing. But "My Sister Eileen" must be right up there in the second rank.Bob Fosse has never been better, and Tommy Ralls gets a lot of screen time. Fosse was a great dancer. The "airplane" number that Gene Kelly does in "An American in Paris" is done here by Fosse but at a furious rate, as if he were a jet compared to Kelly's propeller-drive C 47. Not to put Kelly down. He oozed charm and I love the guy, but his terpsichorean accomplishments were a shade below those of dancers like Fosse and Astaire.In this movie -- whose plot is out-dated, a couple of young girls come to the Village to be stars and run into odd characters -- Fosse has never been better on screen. He had a good number in "Kiss Me Kate," but there wasn't enough of him. Here he does a "competition ballet" with Tommy Ralls that boggles the mind. I won't even try to describe it. At the end, both do a back flip, something Fosse always had trouble with. And it's all done to music that has no tune. It's just an ongoing riff.That's one of the problems with the film itself. The numbers aren't that good. "Singin' in the Rain" had songs that had passed the threshold and become standards. Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. The songs in "My Sister Eileen" are tied closely to events in the plot but they aren't memorable. The story itself is dated. Greenwich Village is not what it was in 1954, when people left their windows open and you could sleep on the benches in Washington Square, as I know all too well.But, plot aside, back to Fosse's choreography. Nothing that Kelly or Astaire did -- with the very notable exception of Donald O'Connor's famous "Make 'em Laugh" -- is as hilarious as Fosse's choreography on the band stand. It would take too long to describe it so I'll not try to do it.Neither Janet Leigh nor Betty Garrett had much in the way of musical training but they hold up their end of the deal quite well. The dialog isn't as keen as it seems to think it is but it has its felicities. Betty Garret is trying to talk Fosse out of being so shy in his pursuit of Eileen. Garret: "Faint heart never won fair lady." Fosse: "You mean I should just take the bit in my teeth?" Garret: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Fosse (in a discouraged tone): "That's easier said than done."If you like musical comedies, and especially if you appreciate Bob Fosse, you will enjoy this. Poor Fosse. One of his girlfriends mentioned him in the same breath as Michael Baryshnikov, and Fosse looked down and blushed with humiliation. I don't know why.

Where has this film been all these years? What a completely charming piece of entertainment with a nice score by Jule Styne (Gypsy, Funny Girl, Bells Are Ringing). OK, so it's no Singin' In The Rain or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But it's equally as good as a lot of the other lesser MGM musicals of the 1940s and 1950s such as Summer Stock and On The Town. Based on the 1940 play of the same name (Book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov;) Betty Garrett and Janet Leigh are perfect as the Sherwood sisters. They both shine in their performances. And top it off, the film highlights some wonderful choreography by none other than legendary Bob Fosse. His work is, as it always was, stylish and pure class. The only glitch in the casting is that of Jack Lemon. He tries to be a slick, man-of-the-world New York publisher. But his performance just falls a bit short of his usual standards. And sadly there was very little chemistry between Garrett and Lemon, making the blossoming romance of their characters somewhat hard to believe. Still, even with this small weak link in the chain, overall the film really works.It does seem strange that just the year before this film was released, Broadway produced their own musical version of the original 1940 non-musical version of My Sister Eileen, called Wonderful Town (Music by Leonard Berstein; Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green). While Wonderful Town wasn't a huge Broadway smash, it did run 559 performances, which was respectable for 1954. With a musical stage version of the play already existing as a part of the world of musical theater, I tend to wonder why Columbia started from scratch with this film and didn't film the Bernstein, Comdon & Green musical. But still, it's nice to know that there are two different musical versions of this charming play to enjoy.