业余小偷 Small Time Crooks review by RORY McBRIDE 英文影评

业余小偷，Small Time Crooks

Ushered in over the past few weeks by Russell Crowe's muscles and John Travolta's ego, the summer event movie season has arrived, and that can mean only one thing: a new Woody Allen movie.

Wait, what? Popcorn movie it's not, but Small Time Crooks walks into the summer marketplace as a wonderful alternative to the season's bloated blockbusters. Almost as surprising as an Allen film arriving six months before Oscar season is that Crooks, rife with slapstick and low on existentialism, marks a return to the tone of his early '70s comedies (Bananas, Love and Death, etc.). It's almost as if the hornrimmed auteur was trying to please the Martian in Stardust Memories that told him that he preferred the "early, funny ones."

 

The hero this time is Ray (Allen), an ex-con dishwasher with dreams of a better life for himself and his manicurist wife, Frenchy (Tracey Ullman). Along with his band of bumbling partners (Michael Rapaport, Jon Lovitz, and Tony Darrow), Ray decides to return to his criminal roots. His plan? To take over a restaurant on the same block as a bank, and tunnel through the basement into the vault. Frenchy will sell cookies upstairs to front their activities.

 

The first half of Small Time Crooks is a cocktail with equal parts Big Deal on Madonna Street and the forgotten Edward G. Robinson caper classic Larceny, Inc. While absolutely unoriginal to anyone with a strong sense of movie history, the film's humor manages to compensate for the recycled premise. It's slapstick, pure and simple, but so innocent and breezy it makes for great light comic confectionery. 更多影评 www.130q.com

 

But when Frenchy's cookie business starts booming, the film begins to misfire, albeit in a fascinating way: the jokes, for the most part, stop working (occasional sight gags — like Ray dressed in a tuxedo with gold trim — continue to get laughs), the story becomes tediously predictable, and yet the charm of the cast sustains the picture. Particularly good are Allen, in one of his most endearingly awkward roles in ages (his costumes alone are priceless), and Ullman, who for once gets past her usual reserve of tics and grating voices to create a fully-realized sympathetic character.

 

It's these two stars' relationship, which starts floundering when Frenchy desires to move up the Manhattan social-scene food chain (via, amongst others, a pretentious art dealer played by Hugh Grant), that helps the picture survive its simplistic story. So while the premise is just as predictable as that of the bland Manhattan Murder Mystery, it succeeds where that previous film failed because it relies on characters and not sitcomish trappings.

 

Sure, this is lesser Allen, and it can't remotely compare to his far superior recent work (Deconstructing Harry and Sweet and Lowdown). But the early-summer release of Small Time Crooks makes for a nice bit of event movie counter-programming. Even subpar Allen offers a refreshing breather from the onslaught of no-brain action epics.

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