Directed by:
Woody AllenComposer:
Marvin HamlischCast:
Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Jacquelyn Hyde, Lonny Chapman, Jan Merlin, Howard Storm, Louise Lasser, James Anderson, Mickey Rose, Roy Engel, Dan Frazer (more)Plots(1)
Lonely and frustrated, Virgil Starkwell decides to become a professional thief. Though moderately successful at robbing gum-ball machines, he is apprehended and sent to prison when he attempts an armored car heist. His escape by means of a pistol whittled from a bar of soap results in a 2-year increase of his sentence. But Virgil courageously consents to act as a human guinea pig in a medical experiment and then is paroled and tries to go straight. Unable to find a job, he resorts to purse-snatching, and, while cruising a park for victims, he meets and falls in love with Louise, a lovely young laundress. Determined to change the course of his life, Virgil decides to rob a bank--but the tellers involve him in a heated argument over the spelling in his illegible holdup note, and Virgil again is put in jail. Louise visits him weekly and tries to keep up his spirits, but his jail term ends abruptly when he accidentally finds himself on the outside of the walls. Free again, he marries Louise and begins a new life by taking an office job in another state. Miss Blaire, a predatory fellow employee, learns about his criminal past and blackmails him, whereupon Virgil repeatedly attempts to murder her by stabbing her with a drumstick from the turkey dinner she has prepared. Having failed at an honest living, and with Louise now pregnant, Virgil makes plans for his future family by masterminding still another bank robbery--and once more finds himself behind bars. Undaunted, he effects a daring escape chained to five other convicts and makes his way back to Louise. Now a notorious fugitive, Virgil is recaptured and returned to jail. Sitting in his cell, he reflects on his life of crime as he picks up a bar of soap and begins to whittle. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (3)
I like Woody when he plays the clumsy intellectual (because I can easily relate to him :-P), but I have a problem when he plays a moron, which is the case with Take the Money and Run. His début is not precisely a cavalcade of fun, many of the gags are predictable, especially in the end. It left me with rather mixed feelings. If it was split into two twenty-minute episodes of a comedy series, it would be better, after all, it’s nothing but a series of comedy scenes. ()
For Woody Allen fans, it is an infinite pleasure to watch how the dialogue, gags, and overall atmosphere are polished in his first purely authorial film. I would probably be disappointed if it were just a gangster parody, so I had to start laughing when Janet Margolin appeared on the screen for the first time and Woody began teasing her with sweet words, and later explained in voiceover how he feels when he is with her. I am infinitely glad that he has maintained this explanation throughout his career. ()
A very unworked and wild mixture of humorous sketches, which are similar to Monty Python with exaggerated absurdity and the stupidly exalted voice of the narrator. The result is a sequence of stories, which for the most part are well-thought-out and realized, and a frail story skeleton, from which it is all too evident that it is just a hanger for Allen's social and film-parody humor. ()
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