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Customer Reviews of Take the Money & Run

Auspicious First Effort by Director Allen
This film is treated something like the lost child in the canon of director Woody Allen's career. As if he would have to apologize for this instead of, say, "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion". What Allen attempted here in his directorial debut is groundbreaking. This is the first example I can recall of a director telling his film in mock-documentary style, later employed by Albert Brooks and perfected by Christopher Guest. Allen proves himself to be not only a great comic visualist but there are great verbal puns here as well. The conceit of the film is a gas. We're supposed to believe that Allen's Virgil Starkwell, an inept dweeb of a criminal, if not among the FBI's most wanted does cause Mr. Hoover some sleepless nights. The gags here are rapidfire but I wouldn't spoil it for those who are uninitiated. My favorite being,though, is Virgil orchestrating a prison break with a gun he's fashioned out of soap during a rainstorm. All this failed effort leaves him with is a hand full of soap lather. Also, noteworthy in the cast is the late Janet Margolin as Virgil's faithful wife. Margolin basically plays straight woman to Allen but it's a shame this gifted actress who was so good in "David and Lisa" didn't have a more substantial film career.

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Woody in the good old days
Woody Allen is a great filmmaker who has made some comedies that are also deep character studies (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, etc.). However, there's something to be said for films like What's Up, Tiger Lily, Play it Again, Sam and Sleeper -- films that are just plain funny. Probably the best of these is Take the Money and Run which spoofs the true crime documentaries of the time. Allen plays Virgil Starkwell, a hilariously inept career criminal whose life is one misadventure after another. Using "testimony" from people in Starkwell's life and cinema vierte style photography, Allen peppers the audience with hilarious sight gag after sight gag. Among my favorites: <
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>1. In high school, Starkwell joins the marching band ... as a cello player. The image of Allen running up the street with chair and cello in hand, stopping for a moment to play a few bars, then getting up and running a few more feet in hysterically funny. <
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>2. Starkwell invites his girlfriend (played by Janet Margolin of "David and Lisa") to dinner but doesn't have the money. He breaks into several parking meters. When he tips the maitre'd, he dumps several dollars in change into his hand and all over the floor. <
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>3. Starkwell robs a bank, but the teller can't read the note he hands him, thinking that the word "gun" is "gub." <
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>4. When entering prison, one of the guards frisks Starkwell, inducing peals of ticklish laughter. <
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>Indeed, Take the Money and Run seems a lot more like a film by Allen's former colleague on Your Show of Shows, Mel Brooks, than like one of his later films. The story is just a framework for gag after gag -- most of which are unbelievably funny. Allen did some wonderful and deep character studies later in his career, but Take the Money and Run is a hilarious comedy that should stand among his best work.

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First triple threat from the Woodman. One of his funniest!
`Take the Money and Run' is the very first movie where Woody Allen is writer, director, and star, and true to the first film in any artist's series of work, it may be the his best up to `Annie Hall', his seventh film as writer/director/star and arguably his very best comedy. `Love and Death' and `Bananas' may a little weak. `Play It Again, Sam' has the first writing and direction where the audience develops some empathy with the characters, so it presages the more serious business of the later films. But `Take the Money and Run' is simply nonstop silliness, with some of the longest and best running gags this side of Mel Brooks. <
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>Even this very first movie has many of Allen's trademarks. For a relatively low budget movie, the quality of the music is very, very good, with original pieces contributed by the up and coming Marvin Hamlisch. Even though the supporting cast is not filled with a lot of highly recognizable actors, most of the faces such as the chain gang supervisor all seem to have a vaguely familiar look about them. Allen's female lead is Janet Margolin, for whom this is probably the highlight of her career. His `Bananas' costar, Louise Lasser, later of `Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' appears in a very small role. <
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>Two other trademark motifs are the flashbacks to boyhood and the cut-aways to interviews with the principle character's parents. These devices appear in `Annie Hall' and even in the relatively serious `Crimes and Misdemeanors' plus several other films. <
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>Another typical aspect of this movie is that it is a parody of documentaries, although not with such loving artfulness as Allen does in `Zelig'. <
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>One thing that is entirely absent is any intellectuality. I can't recall any joke for which you need to read a Russian novel or see a classic silent movie to understand. While it strikes me that poor Virgil Starkwell does have some mock heroic aspects which may have been borrowed from `Don Quixote' or `Candide', I think that may be my seeing things of which Allen had no inkling. <
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>Allen has claimed, contrary to a lot of other artists' statements, that comedy is easy. Allen is so adept in this movie at spinning off high quality jokes at such a rate that he genuinely makes it seem effortless. And yet, like the proverbial Chinese meal, you leave this movie and an hour later, you are `still hungry'. That is, you take away no warm feelings for any characters and their situations or any satisfaction that a hero succeeded in a quest or a heavy got their just deserts. <
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>Some movies have compared Allen's work to the Marx brothers. In the sense that I suspect the Marx brothers have inoculated every American comedian since their heyday, I suppose there is something there. I suggest that W. C. Fields much more directly influences Allen. While the Marx brothers used a great deal of visual humor, Fields was a true poet of the illusion of clumsiness, created with his major skill as a juggler. Allen parodies some of Fields' great moves with a pool cue. While Allen can't hold a candle to Fields' dexterity, the result is still pretty funny. <
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>My primary recommendation for people who may like some but not all of Allen's films, this one should definitely be in your collection, whether you just like his `early, funny' movies or prefer all his styles, but want to skip over some of the darker, less well written, or less interesting works. <
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