Cheap Small Time Crooks (DVD) (Woody Allen, Tracey Ullman) (Woody Allen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Small Time Crooks

SMALL TIME CROOKS is an ironic Comedy, Funny and Well Acted
SMALL TIME CROOKS is another four or four and a half film that I was lenient on and gave it a five. It is an entertaining and extremely satisfying comedy that I love because of it's small, but unusually captivating ironic twist. Tracy Ullman plays Frenchie, the wife of Woody Allen who is planning a bank robbery with friends by tunneling up to the bank in the basement of a ex-pizza hut. As a cover, Ullman takes up a cookie baking business up in the front. While the bank robbery plot is getting more and more complicated, Frenchie's business begins to grow... It is a funny movie with some hilarious lines and scenes like the fake news documentary on "Sunset", the company name. It is funny, involving, and the characters are, if not well-"developed", well-"characterized". The acting is great, especially from Ullman and May, Ullman's slow cousin.

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It works and it's funny.
Instead of the usual Upper West Side pseudo intellectual dorks of endless previous Woody Allen yarns, this one revolves around Hell's Kitchen low lives, Frenchie (Tracey Ullman) and Ray (Woody Allen)and their accidental climb up the social ladder.
Frenchie's transformation from tenament dweller to Upper East Side art's matron is hysterical in that she doesn't change at all, only her surroundings do.
One problem with the writing is the character of Ray, who is suppose to be a dim wit, but falls out of character every time he makes a wise crack that is too wise for such a dunce.
Woody Allen is great at capturing the vanity and self absorbtion of New Yorkers and how they never really see themselves objectively.
The cast is great. Elaine May steals all the scenes she is in. Her character, May, is so dense that she needs a set of fog lights to form a logical sentence. Her scene at the party hosted by a society matron, played with perfection by Elaine Stritch, is an instant classic.

The message: Lessons are learned, but ignorance is bliss.

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If you liked "The Castle", then you may enjoy this movie
I've always liked Woody Allen movies, especially his early funny ones, and I just sorta ignored the awful "serious" ones, like "Stardust Memories". But this is a comedy, and it's dreadful. Thank heaven it cost me only five bucks.

OK, so Woody and his wife (Tracy Ullman) become rich and she wants to buy "class". The movie becomes a sneering put-down of her pretensions. It's just plain ugly.

Elaine May is terrific, though, and I'll give the flick an extra star for her performance (as the wife's cousin).