The Easier Way (1946)

★★★★★ · PREPOSTEROUSLY GREAT! · Spuzz · 2003-04-28

This is one lulu of a movie. Bob and Marge invite Dick and his wife for dinner. Bob just can't SHUT UP about motion study. Even his wife pleas with him before the couple gets there, "Oh, Bob, not now!". But soon after, Bob's got the peg board out showing how easy Motion Study is, and begs Dick to try putting pegs into a board. After several fumbling tries, Bob persuades him to do it another way, and he soon has a quicker way of putting the pegs into the board. Soon, the wives are squeeling, "That looks like fun" (It DOES?) The whole thing is of course, tied into better production of…

★★★★ · Very Matter of Fact · JayKay49 · 2012-10-21

This movie takes no right or left turns getting to the point. Wasted motion is lowered production - important in the days when the good ol USA couldn't produce goods fast enough and move ahead to achieve and maintain that everpresent positive balance of trade. Ya know, that concept that gave this place the highest standard of living in the world; a concept, by the way, completely foreign (whoops, no pun intended) today. Dick should have had more time in the green room, though, to put that ratty toupee on better and smack it down with some Brylcream. In that side shot it looks like a birds…

★★★★ · Look, Ma! I Can Bore My Dinner Guests with Both Hands! · Christine Hennig · 2006-03-05

A guy whos obsessed with time and motion study thoroughly ruins a dinner party by talking about nothing else and making the guests try out different ways of putting pegs into a pegboard. His wife gets even with him by assigning him to the kitchen to design a better way of doing dishes. This is a charmingly dorky film that actually makes its points pretty well, but in a silly way. Making it a highly entertaining piece of ephemera. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

★★★★ · Frederick Taylor would be proud · GE_Pretzel · 2006-03-23

Bob, the protagonist of The Easier Way, explains how one can devise alternative methods of performing various repetitive tasks in order to minimize effort and completion time while maximizing productivity. As one would expect from the typical Handy Jam short, there is an effort made to use the subject matter as a vehicle for some fairly goofy humour, but the production doesn't stray from its didacticism. An excellent presentation of basic motion study theory in practice.

★★★★ · Bob, Don't Be A... · Dodsworth the Cat · 2023-03-15

Poor Marge (or "Mawj" as Bob keeps calling her). Married to an obsessive, way-too-serious guy who brings his work home with him, destroying dinner parties in his wake with his one-track mind. If this were the '60s, Bob would stand over a game of Twister with his stop-watch, analysing every move instead of partying (and, then, be clueless about why he's not being invited back). This isn't a game to Bob, though. It's capital-I Important. Very Important. The suburban wives put up with Mr. Wet Blanket for 12 minutes of screen time before getting the last laugh on Bob, who is humourless to the…

★★★ · Things aren't what they appear! · donwert · 2010-06-14

This is a GM film about motion studies of industrial activities and why they are important. Supposedly, they permit more production with less work and are a "win-win" for the companies and the workers. Oh, happy day! The reality is different as I found out during a summer factory job I had. We were assembling lawn sprinkers and had a daily quota to meet. If we exceeded the quota, we got a bonus. One 8-hr. shift we assembled so many sprinkers we got paid for 11 hours. I was happy as a clam! But the other workers, the ones who would still be assembling sprinkers when I went back to college…