I do not like Sinatra, and as someone once said, Joey is the role he was born to play.  A self-important little heel.  I think he had a very slight singing voice (with orchestral delusions of grandeur, look at the arrangement of his "Softly, As I Leave You") and I think he was a megalomaniac.  Also, before I drop the subject, the tune in this flick that floored all the other reviewers here ("The Lady Is A Tramp") was written for a woman and has many more, and many cleverer choruses, and was written for "Babes in Arms," not "Pal Joey."  Rita Hayworth (whose character, Vera Simpson, was just rich on the stage) plays a former stripper, not a former singer.  And her number, "Zip!" has words in it not even written by Hart!  The plot of the show (par for Hollywood) was bowdlerized, rewritten and destroyed for the flick, and left simplistic and with most of its songs gone.  Good ones too.  I've read O'Hara's libretto and I've heard the score.  The film is a colorful diversion (like the films of Porter's "Can-Can" and Loesser's "Guys and Dolls," both also with Sinatra, both also eviscerated and abridged, though Loesser fared best of the three), it'll kill an hour and a half, Rodgers' tunes are done well (as well as non-singers can do them), O'Hara and Hart are rewritten with only the bare bones left, but in 2003, who really cares anymore.  Rodgers & Hart will be around when this shadow of one of their best shows (almost all their shows were their best shows, they were gems, but this one had a script by John O'Hara, sigh, what a waste) is forgotten.  Watch it, feel good (if you can stand Sinata; Novak and Hayworth are talented and beautiful), and then forget it.