On the Lamb
SMALL TIME CROOKS
Forget Woody's middling Small Time Crooks has one thing to recommend it.
With Woody Allen, Elaine May, Tracy Ullman, Michael Rapaport
Written and directed by Woody Allen
WOODY ALLEN'S NEW COMEDY, Small Time Crooks, begins as a shrill story about an ex-con with a moronic scheme to rob a bank, and for about 30 deafening, witless minutes, it stays that way. Then, as if by accident, it slowly reconstructs itself as something with the potential to be somewhat more interesting.
But to paraphrase Alvy Singer, Allen's quintessential alter ego (from Annie Hall), "potential" is the operative word here. Small Time Crooks chugs along for 60 minutes more like an Edsel running on empty, trying to build momentum without every really committing itself to anything. It's lazy work from Allen, and more than that it's just not very funny most of the time. It feels like the work of a comic genius with whom everyone is so happy to work that nobody has the nerve to tell him he's not hitting his mark - or anyone else's.
Set in a slightly twisted version of contemporary Manhattan, Small Time Crooks revolves around the noisy working-class marriage of Ray Winkler (Allen), a former racketeer who now washes dishes, and his wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman), a former stripper who now stays home and bakes cookies that Ray's friends love. Frustrated by his nowhere life, and fancying himself a "brain" - that's what they called him in prison, only he didn't realize it was a joke - he decides to buy a vacant storefront and, while Frenchy sells cookies over the counter, construct a tunnel into the vault of a nearby bank.
But before they know it their bank plan is foiled and Frenchy's cookies are the talk of the town. One year later, they own a thriving international business and live in a posh penthouse that Frenchy furnishes with cheesy leopard skins and high-priced junk. Their would-be robber friends, who all owned a piece of the business, have become rich as well: Denny (Michael Rapaport), an oaf who wears his miner's helmet backwards because it looks cool; Benny (Jon Lovitz), Ray's sardonic pal from prison; and May (Elaine May), Frenchy's dangerously vacant cousin, who worked as a clerk in the cookie shop and learned everything she knows (which isn’t much) from TV.
From there, Small Time Crooks becomes a story about the lure of fortune and the utter impossibility of changing social classes. We are who we are, Allen seems to believe, and opposites attract, which surely has been the touchstone of his own private life.
Frenchy, determined to learn about art and culture, seeks the tutelage of an English art dealer (Hugh Grant) who has larceny on his mind. Meanwhile, Ray turns out to possess at least one rudiment of the typical Woody Allen character type: He dislikes change and can't adapt to new surrounds. This gives Allen ample opportunity to whine and bumble, an act that becomes so grating after just five minutes that he distracts you from getting involved in anything else on screen (assuming there’s something to get involved in).
Allen is simply not credible as a working-class schlub who drinks beer and doesn't have an idea in his scrawny little head. His character is an idiot, and a stupid one at that: Not funny or ironic or surreal or absurd, just plain stupid. Decades ago Allen made good clean uptown fun of truckers named "Cheech," and now he's trying to play one. The result is often horrifyingly bad, so much so that you can't tell whether Allen means to honor the working fool or put him in his grave once and for all.
In its best moments, Small Time Crooks dissects moneyed New York society with clean bloodless cuts. Allen has done that sort of thing well for years, even when he expects us to like some of his self-absorbed Manhattanites (usually the artists more than the aristocrats). But the movie is short on this sort of satisfying parody, and everything else just meanders, looking for a place to settle.
In part, Small Time Crooks is so inert because Allen still refuses to give his film editor anything to do. He shoots virtually every scene in a long take, occasionally following the actors around with the camera, and grudgingly when he does. As a consequence, his movie feels static when it needs some visual chutzpah. His actors are game, and sometimes even amusing, but they're given such dull things to say that they can't help the undertaking very much.
Watching Allen on screen with Elaine May tells the story. May has the movie's best jokes, but it's not just what she says: It's her immaculate timing and effortless confidence as she casts a glance and speaks a line. Allen and May show the difference between intellect and instinct in comedy, and Allen looks almost amateurish performing next to her. It's so good to have May back on screen that Allen might just have stepped aside and written the movie all about her.