Watch Take the Money and Run For Free

Let's be realistic.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Take the Money and Run was one of the first mockumentaries to be widely released. Again and again we go back to the parents' talking heads and their Groucho Marx masks, because they are so ashamed of their son's crimes that they dare not show their faces. This is, like Ebert notes, mildly funny the first time and less so with each revisit as they continually bicker and fight (one notable exception is when the narrator interrupts them himself and orders them to get to the point - a sure jab at the tendency for many of these talking heads to waffle on and on). Another aspect of the mockumentary is the brooding voice- over narration that is full of self-seriousness and self-importance. It presents Virgil as an infamous outlaw, not quite Bonnie and Clyde, but nevertheless iconic enough to have a documentary made about his life and crimes. Throughout the film, we keep expecting that the story will build to some monumental, historical point, some crazed crime of infamy, but it doesn't. The story is like his life; a deflated, missed punchline. Most stories have the protagonists wavering from their morality and considering breaking bad and descending into a life of crime, if only to survive. Virgil is not like most protagonists. He does the opposite - so many times he is nearly tempted to go straight, to give up crime and find a nice, honest job. Suffice to say he fails at that too. A lot of the film's comedy is drawn from Allen's stand- up tendencies. So as the jokes come thick and fast we have less interesting visuals on the screen. That is not to say that they are not funny. One of his bank robberies fails because his handwriting is too messy and the characters debate endlessly on his real meaning - he is then told to go through the proper bank hold-up procedures. His spars with his wife are particularly inspired; one argument mixes the usual domestic pains (laundry mix-ups, hogging the bathroom) with the occasion of a big group score. Another has him innocently desiring a tie instead of a newborn child. In a classic bait and switch, Virgil falls head over heels in love with her at first sight, and then decides not to rob her, in that exact order. And there are humorous visual gags too. A favourite of Virgil's is to fiddle endlessly with Louise's clothes, but never successfully remove them (one instance has him stage a blow by blow re-enactment of the usual wordless romantic surprise from behind). An early one throws him, a seated cello player, into a marching band, fighting the ever probing urge of whether to play another note or keep dragging his chair along. Poor Virgil. His music mentor recounts that he could not even become proficient at the instrument: "He blew into it". This is pretty damning if you are playing the trumpet or clarinet, and absolutely catastrophic if you are playing the cello. There is an extended gag where Virgil is chained up with several other prisoners; this makes for many funny situations, particularly as they shuffle forwards and waddle around trying to appease a policeman, who tells them to each check a different window in the house, and as Virgil tries to have a private conversation with his wife. Try as he like, Virgil cannot seem to get away from his destiny.

The only real Woody Allen movie of the 60s, it's sometimes a wonder his impressive career ever got started with such inauspicious beginnings. After working in TV as a writer since 1950, his first break into the movies came with 1965's overdone and incredibly dated What's New Pussycat (4). Although he wrote the screenplay and had a role in it, it's not regarded as a Woody Allen film for the very valid reason that he didn't direct it. However, the fact that a great number of people tend to misremember the similarly non-Allen directed Play It Again, Sam (7) from 1972 as a Woody picture is perhaps a reflection on its relative worth.After this there followed a couple of TV movie scripts and 1966's What's Up, Tiger Lily? (5) a Japanese spy film dubbed to turn it into a comedy. Reputedly the idea of behind it was from AIP president Henry G. Saperstein, with Allen hired as gag writer and one of the voices doing the dubbing. Certainly, despite his "Associate Producer" credit, Allen didn't have a great deal of control over the picture, with an impersonator performing some extra lines as Allen and scenes of The Lovin' Spoonful crudely grafted in to extend the runtime. There are some nice one-liners in Tiger Lily ("He lives in that piece of paper?") but ultimately you'd expect something more substantial for what was, after a fashion, Allen's official directorial movie debut. Yet if nothing else, the studio interference on Tiger Lily did make Woody pledge to have greater creative control for his future works. After this we got uncredited rewrites and a role in the appalling Casino Royale (q.v.), a couple of Woody Allen TV specials and the script to the film Don't Drink The Water, a film Allen held in such low regard he remade it 25 years later. It's a messy, patchy start, and Allen wouldn't really begin to see his true potential until the 1970s.So with Take the Money and Run as, for all intents and purposes, the first "Woody Allen movie" then it's interesting to see his art originate here. It's actually quite surprising, for a film in which he unusually plays someone uneducated and working class, how many of his themes are right there at the start. We get psychotherapy, atheism, relationship comedy... there's even the first signs of someone being forced to kill to protect their own lifestyle. That's not to say that Take the Money and Run gave us Crimes and Misdemeanors (and two partial remakes in the late 2000s) but that the seed of the idea was there from the start of his career. There's also the mock documentary format, reused again in his work, most famously of course in 1983's Zelig. Although taken for granted today, this was still a relatively groundbreaking format for the time.Comedy is subjective, but there are parts where Take the Money and Run may be too broad and self-consciously "kooky" today, as with all of his 60s work. If you enjoy jokes like being "in illegal possession of a wart" or a man being turned into a rabbi by taking experimental drugs then it could be for you. But often the jokes are subtler, more inventive and wittier, and sometimes the two forms collide. Witness the scene where Allen, at a job interview, is asked what kind of office he used to work in. "Rectangular" comes the reply, an amusing adjoinder that works in the incongruous surroundings. Except, as the vignette goes on, we find he's playing a game of "What's My Line?" with a fellow colleague, and so the initial gag has been rendered meaningless. This happens repeatedly throughout, some pseudo-realistic moments rendered inert by the fantasy trappings. The one time it actually happens in reverse is when Allen is surreally holding a man at gunpoint while having a polite conversation with him... only for it to emerge that the man is a policeman who is allowing him to think he's getting away with it.However, there are also lots of genuinely inventive sequences in this film, co-written with Mickey Rose (who also co-wrote Tiger Lily and 1971's Bananas). A scene with a gun made out of soap caught in the rain, a cellist in a marching band, a domestic chain gang and a scene with an illegible hold up note are all inspired, even if the latter goes on a little too long. Adding to this is the ending, which contains arguably the most perfect punchline in any Woody Allen picture. Credit to this is given to editor Ralph Rosenblum, who convinced Allen to scrap the downbeat ending where the lead character died in a hail of bullets.In all, watching these first forays into cinema is an interesting education into the work of Woody Allen. It's a world away from the likes of Another Woman, and shows just how varied his career was, before he began to stagnate in the 90s. The Woody Allen of today still produces watchable films, but the works of a man in his 70s with a long career behind him naturally lack the zest and hunger of a writer in his 30s who was just starting out. They're also a telling reminder that the oft-misquoted "early, funny ones" were really just a very small part of his output and far from representative of the body of his work.

Woody Allen's first Imovie is a slapstick comedy with a brilliant series of gags about a failed cello player who takes up a life of crime. Virgil Starkwell is being hunted by the FBI and the movie is a newsreel account consisting of side-splitting skits: Virgil escaping from prison using a bar of soap; trying to rob a bank as tellers argue over the meaning of his notes; chain gangs on the loose as everyone overlooks the obvious clanging of the chains. The clichés are endless and exaggerated to the point of hysteria. Interviews with his parents (in Groucho Marx disguises) are part of the narrative. We can see the style of humor that at the time was reminiscent of Mel Brooks. Interesting to compare these with his mature movies such as those set in Manhattan in the 1980's and later on, Crimes and Misdeameanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery, where the word play and script were dominant. Yet the early Woody Allen was a budding genius and very funny.

In Woody Allen's first real "Woody Allen movie", he already proves to be among the funniest people who ever lived. Although his later movies were better written (as in they have more well- defined characters, etc.), this is probably his funniest. The movie is full of brilliant sight gags and visual humour with great comedic timing. And humour like this has never been handled so brilliantly since the great Tex Avery.The thing I like the most about it is how deadpan the actors are. Woody Allen plays his role like he would a straight man, despite how weird and idiotic his character is. His parents are very serious in this movie despite wearing silly Groucho Marx glasses. And the narrator sounds like he's actually talking about a serious criminal. All the more proof that deadpan silliness is the best kind of silliness.This comedic masterpiece is recommended to all Woody Allen fans, especially if you're also a fan of that other comedy genius that obviously inspired this movie, Tex Avery.