![Take the Money and Run [DVD]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/511AF3P3ZWL._SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
`Take the Money and Run' is the very first movie where Woody Allen is writer, director, and star, and true to the first film in any artist's series of work, it may be the his best up to `Annie Hall', his seventh film as writer/director/star and arguably his very best comedy. `Love and Death' and `Bananas' may a little weak. `Play It Again, Sam' has the first writing and direction where the audience develops some empathy with the characters, so it presages the more serious business of the later films. But `Take the Money and Run' is simply nonstop silliness, with some of the longest and best running gags this side of Mel Brooks.
Even this very first movie has many of Allen's trademarks. For a relatively low budget movie, the quality of the music is very, very good, with original pieces contributed by the up and coming Marvin Hamlisch. Even though the supporting cast is not filled with a lot of highly recognizable actors, most of the faces such as the chain gang supervisor all seem to have a vaguely familiar look about them. Allen's female lead is Janet Margolin, for whom this is probably the highlight of her career. His `Bananas' costar, Louise Lasser, later of `Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' appears in a very small role.
Two other trademark motifs are the flashbacks to boyhood and the cut-aways to interviews with the principle character's parents. These devices appear in `Annie Hall' and even in the relatively serious `Crimes and Misdemeanors' plus several other films.
Another typical aspect of this movie is that it is a parody of documentaries, although not with such loving artfulness as Allen does in `Zelig'.
One thing that is entirely absent is any intellectuality. I can't recall any joke for which you need to read a Russian novel or see a classic silent movie to understand. While it strikes me that poor Virgil Starkwell does have some mock heroic aspects which may have been borrowed from `Don Quixote' or `Candide', I think that may be my seeing things of which Allen had no inkling.
Allen has claimed, contrary to a lot of other artists' statements, that comedy is easy. Allen is so adept in this movie at spinning off high quality jokes at such a rate that he genuinely makes it seem effortless. And yet, like the proverbial Chinese meal, you leave this movie and an hour later, you are `still hungry'. That is, you take away no warm feelings for any characters and their situations or any satisfaction that a hero succeeded in a quest or a heavy got their just deserts.
Some movies have compared Allen's work to the Marx brothers. In the sense that I suspect the Marx brothers have inoculated every American comedian since their heyday, I suppose there is something there. I suggest that W. C. Fields much more directly influences Allen. While the Marx brothers used a great deal of visual humor, Fields was a true poet of the illusion of clumsiness, created with his major skill as a juggler. Allen parodies some of Fields' great moves with a pool cue. While Allen can't hold a candle to Fields' dexterity, the result is still pretty funny.
My primary recommendation for people who may like some but not all of Allen's films, this one should definitely be in your collection, whether you just like his `early, funny' movies or prefer all his styles, but want to skip over some of the darker, less well written, or less interesting works.
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Mr. M. J. Burgess-Moon
Woody the First
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2018
Woody the First
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2018
My gradual quest to buy all of Woody’s movies that he’s written & directed begins here. It’s the first major “mockumentary” & it contains some outstanding gags & slapstick moments. My favourite being his parents wearing disguised to be interviewed, as they don’t want to be identified.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2018
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Keith Naylor
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2014David H. Bebbington
Plenty of laughs
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2016
