It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Woody Allen was back in his 2000 film, Small Time Crooks. After being sadly absent from his 1999 film, Sweet and Lowdown, I was thrilled to see the director make the return to starring in another one of his films. The beautiful thing about Woody Allen putting out a film a year is that if one doesn't suit someone, you can try again next year with a pretty good chance at success. Another positive aspect of putting out so many films is the hope that I haven't seen Woody starring in one of his films for the last time. I hold my breath a little after watching one of the maestro's films and noticing his absence that I haven't enjoyed his last starring role. Small Time Crooks stars Allen and Tracey Ullman as a down-and-out couple always looking for a way to strike it rich, despite having a limited skill set. When they get the chance to join with a group of associates in hopes of finally obtaining the riches they've spent their lives chasing, they leap at the chance to become big time crooks.Ray Winkler (Woody Allen) and Frenchie Winkler (Tracey Ullman) have been with each other through thick and thin. Their 25-year marriage has withstood prison sentences and probations and it seems stronger than many relationships that have survived less. Ray Winkler has spent his life as a thief. A safe-busting bank robber hasn't looked too good on many resumes, so he mostly spends his time trying to come up with new ideas for getting he and his wife money. Frenchie has worked as a nail technician for years and single-handedly amassed the couple's current fortune of $6,000. Ray and some of his crook cronies have devised a plan to rob a bank through the wall of the bank's newly vacant neighbor. The only problem with their plot is, that each participant in the plan has to come up with their share-$6,000. Frenchie, despite spending her days dreaming of a glamorous life in which she has infinite funds and nothing is out of her price range, initially refuses to put up the money, as she has grown accustomed to the predictable legal existence she and her husband currently live. The plan won't go forward without Frenchie and she is eventually swayed with the promise of using the storefront as a means to sell the cookies she spends so much time perfecting. As the rest of the crew struggles with exacting a means to gain entry into the bank, Frenchie's cookie business explodes and after franchising takes off to be a lucrative money source for the group. Once the money starts rolling in, Frenchie wants to leave her old life behind and become a "cultured woman" quickly absorbing as much fine cuisine and art that she possibly can. Ray, on the other hand, wants his life, and his wife, to return to some semblance of the life they used to share. Ray begins to realize that he was more truly happy before with a loving wife and happy home even without the riches they currently enjoy. If Frenchie and Ray can't come together on their lives after fortune, they may soon find their marriage burnt to a crisp.As soon as I heard Woody Allen's voice, I was hooked. Woody could read the phone book (if those are even made anymore) to me and I would be euphoric. That quintessential New York voice is the only one I want to hear reading his perfect scripts to me. It doesn't hurt that actually seeing him in some of the wardrobes of the film may be enough to keep me entertained for life. I mean, Woody Allen in yellow pants and a gold collared jacket is hilarious in its own right. It was also a treat to see Woody Allen playing a bad comic. One of Ray's idiosyncrasies in the film was that he told horrible jokes that no one ever offered even so much as a courtesy laugh for. One has to do something quite well to convince an audience they're doing it poorly, and that is exactly what Woody Allen did. I can only imagine him sitting at his typewriter penning horrid jokes in the mindset of a bad comic, as only a good comic could. Small TIme Crooks is a lot of fun and has its hard-hitting moments as a couple evaluates their marriage and what their change in status does to it. Here I am, again, to warn against anyone being dismissive of "lower tier" Woody Allen.

Woody Allen has had an award-winning career in comedy – as a writer, actor and film director. But, his frequent roles as a whiny character on film soon become grating to me and wear out much of the comedy of the script. This film is an exception. Although other projects have received the honors, "Small Time Crooks" is one of the funniest of his films. It has more witty dialog and funny situations than most. And the script is loaded with enough hilarious dialog that it overrides the few occasions when Allen's character reduces to whining about something. The plot for this film is superb and very funny with its several diversions. The acting is tops by the entire cast. Allan is very good as Ray, and Tracey Ullman is a riot as his wife, Frenchy. Jon Lovitz is Benny, Tony Darrow is Tommy and Michael Rapaport is Denny. All have very funny scenes and lines. Hugh Grant does a fine job as a straight man. But Elaine May as May has the best lines by far and steals the scenes in which she appears. I rate this one of the funniest and best of Allen's movies, especially for the screenplay and the excellent cast. It's a very good caper comedy. Here are some of my favorite lines from the film.Ray, "What would you say if I told you you were married to a genius?" Frenchy, "I'd say I must be a bigamist."Benny, "Where do you get four fourths and a third?" Denny, "Look, I don't do fractions, right?"TV reporter, "Or, as we in television say, there's no accounting for the public's taste."May, "I'm a hemophiliac." Edgar's wife, "Oh dear, are you bleeding?" May, "Why would I be bleeding?"May, "They diagnosed it as Parkinson's. But they think it could be the Ebola virus or Mad Cow Disease."

Woody Allen's "Small Time Crooks" begins hilariously and then spends its last half making us feel guilty for the laughs we had in the first half. Perhaps it had been so long since Allen has done an all-out comedy, he couldn't keep up the momentum until movie's end.Allen plays Ray, one of the titular characters, as a variation on his schleppy booking agent in "Broadway Danny Rose." His clothing is only slightly louder than his complaining, and he gesticulates wildly, as though his hands have minds of their own. And Tracey Ullman, as Ray's social-climbing wife Frenchy, certainly seems a perfect match for him. (Allen doesn't have much originality in creating tacky characters--when in doubt, he throws on the plaids and has everyone screech their lines.) Ray, a reformed criminal, plots a scheme to return to his life of crime. There's a vacant building a couple of doors down from a bank, and he figures he can use the building as a front so he can tunnel to the bank and grab the bank's loot. The front will be a shop for Frenchy's homemade cookies, while Ray and his henchmen drill underneath the shop.Comparisons to Allen's first feature, "Take the Money and Run", are inevitable and (for the first part of the movie, at least) worthy. Ray's blunders with his no-brain partners (Michael Rapaport and "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Jon Lovitz) are a slapstick delight. And when their (mis)fortunes take an unexpected turn for the richer, the movie seems meant to live up to its early promise.But then, after a half-hour of making fun of these lowlifes, the movie asks us to take their plight seriously--if you can call getting unexpectedly rich a plight. Frenchy hires a stuffy art curator (Hugh Grant) in hopes of furthering her education (shades of "Annie Hall"). Ray, feeling Frenchy drifting away from him, starts to fall for her dimwitted cousin (Elaine May). And the movie audience suddenly feels the movie's sense of fun drifting away.Why the movie suddenly dismisses the bungling bankrobber trio is a mystery, but dismiss them it does, as though they were a plot device which Allen quickly tired of. The cookie-shop front might have been funnier if Frenchy's creativity with cookies benefited everybody except for Ray. (A similar premise propelled Albert Brooks' "The Muse," and "Crooks" even borrows "Muse's" plot device of the wife finding unexpected success with making cookies.) Instead, the movie replaces its prime source of laughs with schlocky pathos. The camera closes in on Frenchy's face when she realizes her rich friends have been making fun of her, and suddenly the plot goes from the highs of "The Muse" to the lows of "The Flintstones." The cast wavers all over the place. Allen is in his slapstick element, doing physical schtick he hasn't attempted in ages and pulling it off. And Lovitz and Rapaport are delightfully dumb. On the other hand, Hugh Grant's role is underwritten, and Elaine May's is just plain *not* written. Allen seems to have a thing for dumb brunettes, and May adds nothing to the role except catatonia.Allen is so fearful of being reminded of his "earlier, funnier movies" that each time he tries for purely funny, he seems a little more removed from the source. "Crooks" has its fair share of laughs (though more at the start than at the end), but finding comedy in silly characters and then asking us to feel unearned sympathy for them plays less like early Allen and more like latter-day Jerry Lewis.

This is a real uneven movie. I was absolutely loving and enjoying this movie during its first half hour or so but the movie suddenly took a turn for the worse.It's almost like you are watching two completely different movies. It seems as if Woody Allen had two different scripts laying around but only had the time and money to make one of them. What begins all so promising and get set up so well in the movie its opening gets totally abandoned in its other half. Even some promising fun characters that still played a prominent role in the first half disappear out of the story completely. Also the comedy seems to be different in its second half. The first half was more some quirky but realistic and fun comedy, while its second half seemed more silly and unrealistic with its story and the character's actions. The movie its first half definitely made me laugh and amused me, while its second half was just only being mildly entertaining. It's not like it made me hate this movie and in itself its second half is also not that bad but the contrast with its first half was still so big that it took away a lot of the enjoyment for me and made the movie as a whole still a disappointing one.You will probably still get lots of enjoyment out of this movie. I mean, it's a Woody Allen comedy, so you know you are going to get some fun moments and some fun lines, from it's excellent cast. The movie leaves the actors plenty of room to improvise away for a bit. Also the comedy itself is quite well written en weaved sneakily into the movie at times. For instance a thing that gets mentioned 5 minutes earlier in the movie suddenly will later reappear again and has a surprising great comedy effect. It would had been all even better if it had a great story to go along with it as well.The story isn't really going anywhere with its second half and only seems to preach in a very unnatural and far from convincing way. It tries to have some messages in it but it all falls flat due to the the movie its approach.An enjoyable but overall still a more disappointing movie, that showed far more premise during its first half.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/