Movies

Small Time Laughs from Small Time Crooks

I guess it should come as no surprise that Woody Allen, one of the movie industry's rarest birds, is the brain behind Small Time Crooks, a movie whose ilk is becoming increasingly rare in America's sprawling, stadium-modeled movie mutli-plexes. Small Time Crooks is small and sweet, with a gentle message and some very gentle laughs. As a film, it serves more as a testament to Allen's remarkable staying power and clout within the industry than it does his prowess as a writer, director or star. With the slew of Jerry Bruckheimer action prototypes (preposterous plot carried out at tremendous expense by a star-studded cast playing parodies of themselves) engaged in mortal combat with WB-style 85-minute soundtrack marketing pieces, baby-boomer "what have we done with our lives?" message flicks and "Something About Mary" knock-offs at the box office, you can't help but wonder: How did this movie sneak through the cracks?

The only answer is Allen, who is at the top of his game in Crooks. Of course it's a game that he invented, which helps. The story, along with the costumes, location and dialogue, is as timeless and simple as an Aesop Fable: Neurotic Ray (played by Allen), a retired rackets guy and numbers runner, concocts a scheme to rob a neighborhood bank. Why? So he and his manicurist wife Frenchie (veteran character chameleon Tract Ullman) can quit their humdrum working class lives and move to Miami. Though reluctant at first, Frenchie consents, and even runs the front for the operation - a cookie shop. Of course, while Ray and his dimwitted partners make a mess in the basement trying to tunnel under the bank and into the vault, Frenchie's cookies make a killing on the pavement. Once the heist effort stalls for good, the whole crew realizes that the cookies are the real gold mine and become fabulously rich selling them across America. The plot then centers on exploring the age-old question of what is more important - love or money.

The talented, yet unspectacular cast carries out the story with skill and sincerity, and delivers the kind of characters we can depend on, if not exactly relate to: Michael Rapaport is the heart-of-gold dumb lug from Brooklyn (talk about no fear of being typecast); Elaine May is the quirky, one short of a six-pack cousin whose fractured logic sometimes makes more sense than our own; Hugh Grant is the English con artist that preys on the culturally ignorant, etc. Each injects just the right measure of humanity - even Grant, who could have easily gotten away with a less complex performance.

Now if this all sounds a little naïve, well, it is. But when was the last time you went to a PG-rated movie with such a simple premise, and such a simple message, that wasn't aimed for children (Bullshit – nobody saw The Straight Story!) Probably back in the '70s, when Allen was in his prime. And Allen's trademark nostalgic streak is hard at work here. But in this case, the nostalgia works from the outside in, rather than the other way around. Here he's not remembering the days of his youth, or the way Broadway used to be, or even how bank robberies used to be, for that matter. With Small Time Crooks, Allen reminds us how movies used to be - and not that long ago, either. In the process he has created an almost point-by-point rebuttal to what movies have become. Crooks eschews the sex, violence, and profanity that have become the hallmarks of almost all adult-oriented films and instead relies on a simple plot, simple characters, and a simple message to keep its viewers hooked. Allen actually takes a playful swipe at both Reservoir Dogs and Point Break when Ray tries to explain why this plan will work where others had failed.

The result is a kind of "fresh familiarity": There really is nothing new here. You've seen it all before - and from Woody Allen for that matter. Yet you chuckle where you're supposed to (and nowhere else), you empathize where you're supposed to, and you walk away 90 minutes later with a smile. Which is a movie-going experience that Allen is betting that you may have come to miss.