Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the '30s. For the most part, it's Woody Allen Lite, which is not at all a bad thing. While one doesn't want to penalize Allen for his serious ambitions, he often does his best work when he relaxes. Here, he does just that, so while Small Time Crooks may not be the most successful of his straight comedies, it's still a pleasure to watch.Contrary to the claim in DreamWorks' ads and trailers, Small Time Crooks isn't really a throwback to the riotous style of Allen's earliest films. Sure, the lead character, Ray Winkler, is an older version of Allen's Virgil Starkwell, the hero of Take the Money and Run, Allen's first film. (We won't count What's Up, Tiger Lily?, his first directorial credit, which was basically a redubbing of a Japanese film.) But the style of the comedy is altogether different. Take the Money and Run and the rest of Allen's pre-Annie Hall movies were precursors of the Airplane! genre -- gag fests where jokes trumped all other concerns -- plausibility, character, even the laws of physics. But Allen sticks much closer to the real universe here.
John Clifford
Woody Allen, playing safecracker and wisecracker Ray Winkler, hits a quiet, lighter note in Small Time Crooks, which he directs.
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Rated PG.
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Allen plays Ray, a safecracker whose aspirations far outstrip his intelligence. Since getting out of the slammer, Ray has been working as a dishwasher in New York City; his loving wife, Frenchy (Tracey Ullman), makes more money as a manicurist. But Ray has his eyes on a neighborhood bank that looks ripe for the robbing. A pizzeria two doors down has just gone bust, and Ray figures it'll be a piece of cake to rent the space, open up a dummy business, and dig a tunnel over to the bank. He enlists the aid of two friends -- Denny (Michael Rapaport) and Tommy (Tony Darrow) -- presumably the only two guys in all five boroughs stupider than he is. He also recruits Benny (Jon Lovitz), an arsonist he knew in prison.
Frenchy, clearly the smarter and stronger of the two, doesn't like the plan, but eventually she goes along with it, agreeing to run a cookie store upstairs as a cover. And she brings in her cousin May (Elaine May) to help, despite the fact that May, unbelievably, is even dumber than the guys downstairs. To everyone's surprise, the cookie store starts doing huge business.
Less than a third of the way through, we leap ahead a year. All the conspirators are now incredibly wealthy thanks to Frenchy's cookies. But the money goes to Frenchy's head. She aspires to be part of society, to be educated in all the finer things. Ray, for his part, couldn't care less: He's tired of eating escargots and quail eggs and would be happier with a cheeseburger, thank you.
Frenchy hires David (Hugh Grant), a charming but not very successful art dealer, to become their tutor in refinement. But when Ray washes his hands of the whole thing, Frenchy starts to fall for David, who, of course, represents everything that Ray isn't.
Small Time Crooks is much closer in tone to Mighty Aphrodite or Radio Days or, most particularly, Broadway Danny Rose. There are no startling human insights or hair-tearing examinations of the agonies of existence. If anything, this is a mild-mannered screwball comedy -- a tribute to lovable losers. In many ways, it has more to do with The Honeymooners -- an association Allen blatantly makes a few times. Ray and Frenchy have a blend of love and contentiousness similar to Ralph and Alice Kramden. Like Ralph, Ray is constantly threatening his wife with exaggerated physical violence. Jackie Gleason was such a big lovable baby that we always knew it was sheer bluster that he'd never act on. Allen may not be nearly as lovable on screen -- not many actors are -- but we know from the start that he's never going to act on his threats, because Frenchy could take him out in one punch.
In fact, one of the minor shocks in the film is just how old Allen looks: His 64 years are quite evident, perhaps all the more noticeable because it's been three years since we've seen much of him. There will doubtless be complaints that once again he's cast himself opposite a much younger woman -- Ullman just turned 40 -- but at least this time out, his one extramarital flirtation is with May, who is presumably a few years older than he. Actually, May shows her years much less than Allen. She also manages to walk away with nearly every scene she's in. In a story populated almost entirely with dimwits, she creates the grandest dimwit of all. Her character's cheery, well-intentioned obliviousness is irresistible.
Indeed, one of the things that makes the film work is the love and sympathy Allen ultimately grants all the dumb characters. Frenchy may be smarter than Ray in many ways, but for much of the film he can see more clearly than she can. Nearly all these misbegotten losers have moments where they display some variety of intelligence; and certainly they all show some finer qualities than many of the "smarter" characters.
