Take the Money and Run

1969

Take the Money and Run

Critics Consensus

No consensus yet.

90%

TOMATOMETER

Reviews Counted: 20

80%
liked it

Audience Score

User Ratings: 11,899

TOMATOMETER

N/A
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Average Rating: N/A
Reviews Count: 0
Fresh: 0
Rotten: 0

AUDIENCE SCORE

80%
Average Rating: 3.7/5

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Movie Info

When Woody Allen's fans refer to his "earlier, funnier" pictures, they often cite his directorial debut as a shining example. Co-written by Allen and Mickey Rose, this side-splitting takeoff of crime documentaries stars Allen as Virgil Starkwell, a sweetly inept career criminal. The film's most celebrated sequence involves Virgil's inability to write coherent holdup notes ("I have a gub"), but others include Virgil's losing battle with a recalcitrant coke machine and his misguided effort to emulate John Dillinger by carving a gun out of a bar of soap (his weapon disintegrates in a heavy rain). As was often the case in Allen's early films, not all the gags work, but for the most part, Take the Money and Run is a delight, enhanced by the on-target supporting performances of Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire, and (uncredited) Louise Lasser, as well as the energetic musical score of Marvin Hamlisch.

Cast

Woody Allen
as Virgil Starkwell
Janet Margolin
as Louise
Marcel Hillaire
as Fritz
Jacquelyn Hyde
as Miss Blaire
Lonny Chapman
as Jake
Jan Merlin
as Al
James Anderson
as Chain Gang Warden
Howard Storm
as Fred
Mark Gordon
as Vince
Micil Murphy
as Frank
Dan Frazer
as Psychiatrist
Minnow Moskowitz
as Joe Agneta
Nate Jacobson
as Judge
Grace Bauer
as Farmhouse Lady
Ethel Sokolow
as Mother Starkwell
Henry Leff
as Father Starkwell
Don Frazier
as Psychiatrist
Mike O'Dowd
as Michael Sullivan
Louise Lasser
as Kay Lewis
Jackson Beck
as The Narrator
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Critic Reviews for Take the Money and Run

All Critics (20) | Top Critics (5)

View All Critic Reviews (20)

Audience Reviews for Take the Money and Run

½

It doesn't matter how I look at it, the humor of this early Wood Allen semi-mockumentary doesn't work for me at all with those gags that may look great on paper but are a failure on screen, and it is just irritating to see one funny joke for every three or four terrible ones.

Carlos Magalhães
Carlos Magalhães

Super Reviewer

Take the Money and Run is a surrealist crime comedy that's little more than a loosely bound series of gags, and yet somehow the whole thing works. Woody Allen plays Virgil Starkwell, perhaps the world's worst criminal. He gets caught trying to rob a bank because the tellers can't read his hold-up note. He tries to pull another bank job with a gang, and a separate gang holds up the same bank at the very same time. Life is a series of hard knocks for Virgil, until one day when he's about to rob a beautiful girl, and decides to talk to her instead. The two soon become a couple and marry, and it's here the movie makes it's strongest point. The dialogue is at it's strongest and most realistic in the couple's exchanges, especially in the way she refuses to allow him to get away with lying. She knows him all too well, you see. The rest of the world are idiots, though. Unable to recognize even the lamest of schemes, everyone from cops and judges on down to the everyday people are all at the mercy of slightly-above-average-intelligence Virgil, and yet he always manages to do himself in due to his extreme ineptitude. In a movie that's just a series of gags, with the barest and loosest of plots, its fortunate that most of time it works.

Devon Bott
Devon Bott

Super Reviewer

I remember I was reading some Woody Allen Q&A session with Eric Lax and he was talking about how inexperienced he was while making this movie and how difficult it was to direct, so I was surprised to find that this was actually a very tightly structured narrative. All the physical comedy scenes are priceless but it's never like tiresome joke, joke, joke one after the other. The story works passably as well. It's actually one of the better comedies, believe it or not - miles ahead of Bananas and Love and Death. And the women Woody goes for are all so pretty and awesome too - sweet and willing to take a joke, but not in a wallflower sense at all.

Jennifer Xu
Jennifer Xu

Super Reviewer

½

Virgil: After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse. Woody Allen's first big movie. It is done in the style of a mockumentary with hilarious dead pan narration. This movie surrounds the life of Virgil Starkwell, a career criminal...a terrible career criminal who gets caught nearly every time he robs something. The movie goes on about his life, using plenty of gags and running jokes along the way, the majority of which are very funny. Eventually Allen would find his calling in his dialog, but this is a very funny movie in a loony sort of way. Louise: He is always very depressed. I think that if he'd been a successful criminal, he would have felt better. You know, he never made the 'ten most wanted' list. It's very unfair voting; it's who you know.

Aaron Neuwirth
Aaron Neuwirth

Super Reviewer

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