Small Time Crooks (2000)
Directed by Woody Allen
A loser of a crook and his wife strike it rich when a botched bank job's cover business becomes a spectacular success.
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What critics compared Small Time Crooks to
The premise sound encouraging enough in concept, its heist plot setting itself up as a cross between 2000's " Small Time Crooks " and 2008's " The Bank Job "?but with woodland creatures.
The film isn't really witty enough to make adults laugh, although it's chock full of references to 40's noir crime movies (it's like an animated homage to Woody Allen's "Small Time Crooks," which itself reached back to 1942's "Larceny, Inc."), and it's a little plot heavy for little kids, although they'll probably enjoy the adventure (and fart jokes?!).
My favourite story is a toss-up between "The Red-Headed League " (which Woody Allen drew on for Small Time Crooks ) and "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton " (I once had the privilege of showing its Hampstead setting to blind Conan Doyle fan Jorge Luis Borges), and my favourite novel is The Sign of Four .
Trading the chilly shores of Great Britain for a tourist's vision of idyllic Spain, the new film is Allen's second best of the decade after 2005's Match Point and easily the most fun movie he's made since at least Small Time Crooks back in 2000; hardly a second coming for a man whose career will obviously never return to the heights of the long-passed 1970s, but a pleasing and fairly smart film that reveals an unexpected willingness on Allen's part to finally stretch beyond endless copying of the triumphs of his middle-age.
Next to the Bert's Beanery quality of, say, "Small Time Crooks" (worth seeing for the great Elaine May only), it makes for a classy take-in.
Woody Allen has just been barely getting his shots over the net in recent years ("Hollywood Ending," "Small Time Crooks") and had one flat-out whiff ("Curse of the Jade Scorpion").