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."

Review: This is an average movie by Woody Allen which I didn't really find that funny. In many ways I found it more annoying than anything because the storyline was ridiculous Woody Allen is babbling on about rubbish all the way through the film. Tracey Ullman clearly saved the movie as the rich wife of Woody Allen whose attracted to the stuck up Hugh Grant, but when she loses all of her money she soon finds out that Grant was only interested in her cash. I found this movie weak and uninteresting because of its far fetched concept, but it's harmless fun if you want a movie without much depth. Average!Round-Up: This is yet another movie from Allen which I struggled to stay awake through. It's Allen's basic rambling that gets on my nerves in some of his films and his unnecessary million words per minute. I have noticed that he directs other actors much better than he directs himself, which makes his films a bit hard to enjoy because he is in most of his movies and he gets most of the screen time. When I have finished watching all of his films that are on my rental list, I will be able to make a better overall verdict about the writer/producer/director, but at this precise moment, I'm in 2 minds about his work. He is definitely unique and original, but the question is still out there if it's in a good or bad way.Budget: $25million Worldwide Gross: $30millionI recommend this movie to people who are into there Woody Allen movies about a couple who plan to rob a bank but end up making there fortune from selling cookies. 3/10

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.

The great Writer/Director/Star seems a little tired in his new attempt at a more accessible mode of slapstick ala his early movies. The cerebral comedy takes a vacation and this romp is indicative of whimsical rather than witty Woody.It somewhat works and the creative ability of the cast, as well as a half-awake Allen, deliver an easy essay on wealth and want. There are a number of laughs and it all is a rather unusual piece of fluff from a talent that more times than not stimulates the head-bone as much as the funny-bone.Compared to his other gems this one is not made of glass, but admittedly, while not a fugazi, is far from the precious piece of treasure that one normally expects from the "prophet of the misanthropes".