Small Time Crooks

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Small Time Crooks
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Theatrical release poster
Directed byWoody Allen
Written byWoody Allen
Produced byJean Doumanian
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CinematographyZhao Fei
Edited byAlisa Lepselter
Sweetland Films
Distributed byDreamWorks Pictures
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Running time
95 minutes
Template:Pluralize from textUnited States
Template:Pluralize from textEnglish
Budget$25 million
Box office$29.9 million

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Small Time Crooks is a 2000 American crime-comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. It stars Allen, Hugh Grant, Elaine May and Tracey Ullman. The picture's plot has some similarities to that of the 1942 comedy Larceny, Inc.[1]

Small Time Crooks was the highest-grossing film directed by Allen at the North American box office between 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors and 2005's Match Point.[2] The film was released by DreamWorks Pictures on May 19, 2000 and received positive reviews from critics while grossing $29.9 million against a $25 million budget.

Allen has never said whether the film's similarity to Larceny, Inc. was deliberate or if his film was in any way inspired by it. The plot also parallels episodes of at least two American TV series: Gomer Pyle ("Dynamite Diner")[3] and Car 54, Where Are You? ("The White Elephant").[4]

Plot

Career criminal Ray Winkler and his cronies want to lease a closed pizzeria so they can dig a tunnel from the basement of the restaurant to a nearby bank. Ray's wife Frenchy Fox-Winkler covers what they are doing by selling cookies in the restaurant. The robbery scheme soon proves to be a miserable failure, but the cookie business is a hit. After they franchise the business, selling cookies makes them millionaires.

One day, Frenchy throws a big party and overhears people making fun of their poor decorating taste and lack of culture. She asks an art dealer named David Perrette to train her and Ray so they can fit in with the American upper class. Ray hates every minute of it, but Frenchy likes their new culture.

What Frenchy does not know is that David is really just using her to finance his art projects. Ray finally gets fed up and leaves Frenchy. David and Frenchy go to Europe for more cultural enlightenment and while there, she gets a call and finds out she has been defrauded by her accountants. She has lost everything, including her cookie company, home, and possessions. David immediately drops her.

Meanwhile, Ray has gone back to being a crook and tries to steal a valuable necklace at a party. He has had a duplicate made and through a series of circumstances gets the duplicate and real one mixed up. At the party, he finds out that Frenchy is broke, so he leaves and goes to see her. He consoles her by saying he stole the valuable necklace and shows it to her. Her new-found cultural enlightenment enables her to tell the necklace is a fake; Ray has gotten the wrong one. But she produces a very expensive cigarette case that she once had given to David as a gift but stole back after he dumped her. It once belonged to the Duke of Windsor. They reconcile, sell the cigarette case, and retire to Florida.

Cast

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Reception

Box office

Small Time Crooks opened up on the same day as Dinosaur and Road Trip and was the highest-grossing film directed by Woody Allen at the North American box office between 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors and 2005's Match Point, with a gross of $17.2 million;[5] the film became profitable for North American distributor DreamWorks Pictures.[6] However, the film was also one of the few later Allen films which did less well outside the U.S. and Canada, and its global gross was $29.9 million.[7]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 66% based on reviews from 100 critics, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Woody Allen rises from his recent slump with Small Time Crooks. A simple, funny movie, Crooks proves Allen still has the touch that made his name synonymous with off-beat comedy."[8] On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 69 out of 100, based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".[9] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A to F.[10]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: "In this sweet, funny wisp of a movie, Mr. Allen shucks off his fabled angst and returns in spirit to those wide-eyed days of yesteryear, before Chekhov, Kafka and Ingmar Bergman invaded his creative imagination."[11]

Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called it a "Breezy, enjoyable romp gratifyingly zigzags in directions that aren't apparent at the outset and features some intriguingly personal subtext for longtime Woody watchers."[12]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4, and wrote: "Dumb as they (allegedly) are, the characters in Small Time Crooks are smarter, edgier and more original than the dreary crowd in so many new comedies."[13]

Accolades

Tracey Ullman was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the 58th Golden Globe Awards, and Elaine May won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 2000 National Society of Film Critics Awards.[14]

Soundtrack

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See also

References

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  1. ^ Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies on June 15, 2006
  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."The Box Office Gross Of Every Woody Allen Movie Adjusted For Inflation". BuzzFeed. August 2, 2013. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. - Season 5, Episode 19: Dynamite Diner - TV.com". TV.com. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on March 25, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2014.
  4. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Car 54, Where Are You? - Season 2, Episode 16: The White Elephant - TV.com". TV.com. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on May 16, 2016. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."The Box Office Gross Of Every Woody Allen Movie Adjusted For Inflation". BuzzFeed. August 2, 2013. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  6. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.DUKE, PAUL F. (July 24, 2000). "D'WORKS: WHAT LIES BENEATH?". Variety. 379 (9).
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Small Time Crooks (2000)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on October 1, 2007. Retrieved February 15, 2008.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Small Time Crooks (2000)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on September 25, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Small Time Crooks Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved April 1, 2021.
  10. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."SMALL TIME CROOKS (2000) B". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on December 20, 2018.
  11. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Stephen Holden (May 19, 2000). "Just Take the Money and Run? Nah, She Wants Class and Cultcha". New York Times.
  12. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.McCarthy, Todd (May 15, 2000). "Small Time Crooks". Variety.
  13. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Ebert, Roger (May 19, 2000). "Small Time Crooks". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on March 23, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  14. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Small Time Crooks - IMDb, archived from the original on September 9, 2019, retrieved October 2, 2020
  15. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Harvey, Adam (2007). The Soundtracks of Woody Allen. US: Macfarland & Company, Inc. p. 129. ISBN 9780786429684.

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