Rent Small Time Crooks (2000)

Decent mid-period Woody. - Small Time Crooks review by Steve

Broad, slight comedy of manners with Woody (for a change) casting himself as a working class cultural wipeout. He and Tracey Ullman are a great team as a lowbrow, penniless couple who make a fortune and try to assimilate into aloof Manhattan society.

 The film begins with an idea that's been pitched before. A gang of hapless bank robbers led by the deadbeat, small time crook, Ray (Woody Allen) lease retail space in order to dig into a bank up the street. To create a front, his wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman) opens a bakery in the store and, of course, her biscuits are a sensation.

 They make so much money that they abandon the raid and become a filthy rich, if eccentrically managed corporation. The latter part of the film relates to Ullman's compulsion to social climb, bringing her into contact with Hugh Grant, excellent as an oleaginous art dealer. He is richer, but no less a crook than Woody and his crew.

 It's an insubstantial confection, with most of the comedy pitched awkward as the new money clashes against the wealth of the elite. The laughs are at Ray and Frenchy's expense, because their taste is so vulgar. The film gets a huge lift from Elaine May as Frenchy's even dumber relative, whose dialogue is so idiotic that it appears to have a strange incidental wisdom.