Movie Notes: Small Time Crooks

August 13th, 2009

= 4 stars

Starring Hugh Grant, Tracey Ullman, Elaine May
Directed by Woody Allen

Synopsis

Ray Winkler (Woody Allen) gathers a team of small-time crooks — including his wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman) — to tunnel beneath a bank using a cookie store as a front. Complicating matters: everyone involved is a complete moron.

The Good

• The premise soon becomes clear that Ray and his cohorts are several cards short of a full deck, but this doesn’t result in physical comedy or fart jokes. Everyone is fully functional but in that dim bulb sort of cluelessness that results in some pretty funny situations. It’s as if Allen cloned the Mia Sorvino’s Linda Ash from Mighty Aphrodite.
• The dumbest of the lot is Frenchie’s relative May, who as a result gets the best lines; so stupid they actually take a while to get, or they are taken as jokes by others. In one scene she claims to have both mad cow and the Ebola virus, and requests cortizone pills.
• Not even a third through the film, the movie shifts focus as the Winklers suddenly find themselves wealthy beyond belief. A really wry observation on Allen’s part is that the couple would spend lavishly, but on all the wrong things, since they lack any culture or taste. As a result their entire apartment is a garish combination of Italian glass and animal sculptures. Frenchy wants to remedy the situation by taking culture lessons from art collector David (Hugh Grant) while Ray wants no part of this and insists on eating greasy Chinese food and drinking Pepsi out of wine glasses.
• The Winklers aren’t the only crooks — not to give too much away, but stupid people with a lot of money are sure to attract certain types.

The Bad

• Allen looks like a walking corpse.
• The film’s shift from caper to social comedy comes rather quick — I would have preferred more Ocean’s Eleven style capers with increasing incompetence from the dim-witted gang.

Conclusion

I’d ordinarily give a movie of this caliber three stars, but its askew applicability to today’s financial crisis lends it new relevance. In that light, its social satire of idiots coming into money has an entirely different layer of uncomfortable humor. And the ultimate message — that money doesn’t always lead to happiness — is well worth hearing.

Next Woody Allen Movie: Curse Of The Jade Scorpion
Previous Woody Allen Movie: Sweet And Lowdown

IMDB: Small Time Crooks
Wikipedia: Small Time Crooks
Rotten Tomatoes: Small Time Crooks 67%