Rent Small Time Crooks (2000)

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

Flimsy but fun comedy of manners with Woody Allen- for a change- casting himself as a working class cultural halfwit. He and Tracey Ullman make a great team as a lowbrow, hardup couple who accidentally get rich and try to assimilate into Manhattan high society.

The premise isn't all that new. A mob of hapless bankrobbers led by a clueless deadbeat (Woody) lease retail space to dig into a bank up the street. To create a front, his wife (Tracey) opens a bakery in the store and, of course, her biscuits are a sensation.

 They make so much money they abandon the raid and become a filthy rich, eccentrically managed corporation. The second half focuses on Ullman's compulsion to social climb, bringing her into contact with Hugh Grant, as an oleaginous art dealer. He is educated, but no less a crook than Woody.

 It's a lightweight confection, which makes its comedy from the culture clash of new money against the wealth of the elite. It feels awkward that the laughs are at the expense of the poor and their lack of taste. But the film gets a huge lift from Elaine May as Tracey's even dumber relative, whose dialogue is so idiotic that it appears to have a strange incidental wisdom.