Small Time Crooks Movie Review: They Never Completed Kindergarten Because They Were Drafted

Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks begins with the kind of comic energy that makes it seem destined to become one of his more effortlessly entertaining films. The premise is quintessentially Allen: a collection of marginal New Yorkers, none particularly bright or competent, stumble into extraordinary success through a scheme that is supposed to be a simple bank robbery. The early sections are raucously funny, fueled by physical comedy, verbal bluster, and the pleasure of watching characters whose ambitions consistently exceed their abilities.

Allen plays Ray Winkler, a former convict and mediocre safecracker who conceives a plan to rob a bank by renting a storefront next door and opening a cookie shop as a front. His wife, Frenchy (Tracey Ullman), has little interest in the mechanics of the robbery. What she wants is the money and, more importantly, the social status she believes money will provide. When the cookie shop unexpectedly becomes a spectacular success, Ray’s criminal enterprise is rendered almost irrelevant. The couple becomes wealthy without ever becoming particularly sophisticated, creating a comic situation in which their fortunes change far more rapidly than their personalities.

This is where the film initially finds its richest vein. Ray is a wonderfully comic creation: a man who imagines himself as a tough, calculating criminal while possessing neither the intelligence nor the temperament for the role. Frenchy, meanwhile, recognizes almost immediately that wealth has opened a door into a world she has long coveted. Ullman makes her transformation both ridiculous and oddly sympathetic, and Allen uses the couple to mock the American assumption that money can purchase refinement, happiness, or even a convincing imitation of either.

The supporting performances are equally important. Hugh Grant plays David, an elegant art dealer who becomes Frenchy’s guide into high society, with a deliberately polished charm that contrasts amusingly with Ray’s rough-edged ignorance. Elaine May, as Frenchy’s cousin May, provides some of the film’s most polished comic moments. May’s peculiar behavior becomes increasingly difficult to disguise as the family’s circumstances change, and May’s discomfort with the social world Frenchy so eagerly embraces gives the film another perspective on the absurdity of its characters’ aspirations.

Yet Small Time Crooks cannot sustain the comic momentum of its first half. Once the cookie shop gives way to wealth, art, and high society, the movie becomes noticeably less inventive. The humor remains, but it tapers off in the second half, as the frenetic farce of the opening gives way to a more conventional comedy of manners. Allen is clearly interested in the contrast between working-class authenticity and upper-class affectation, but the satire becomes increasingly familiar, and the film loses some of the spontaneity that initially made it so funny.

The weakness is not that Allen changes subjects, but that the new subject matter does not generate equally strong comic situations. Ray and Frenchy trying to execute a half-baked burglary is inherently funny because their incompetence is constantly colliding with immediate consequences. Their attempts to navigate wealth and sophistication are less surprising. The film feels as though it has exhausted its best comic premise before reaching its conclusion.

Still, Small Time Crooks has considerable charm. Allen’s affection for his foolish characters prevents the satire from becoming entirely contemptuous, and the film has a warmth that is sometimes absent from his more bitter comedies. Its central joke—that people can acquire enormous wealth without acquiring the qualities they associate with wealth—is hardly new, but Allen finds enough amusing variations on it to keep the film engaging.

Small Time Crooks ultimately falls short of the comic heights it establishes at the beginning. Its first half is spry and frequently hilarious; its second is more subdued and predictable. But even when the laughter becomes less frequent, the film remains an enjoyable and perceptive comedy about class, aspiration, and the curious human tendency to mistake social status for personal transformation.