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Schmalspurganoven
Tagline: They took a bite out of crime
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 94 minutes

Film Synopsis

Ray Winkler (Woody Allen), a petty theif, schemes a ridiculous robbery on a bank, by buying a shop two doors down from the bank and tunneling under to steal the money from inside the bank. His wife Frenchy (Tracy Ullman) must front the money for the building, and she gives him all kinds of grief. Rapaport, Darrow, and Lovitz play Winkler's partners in crime.

The tunneling doesn't work out very well. While the criminals flounder in the shop's basement, Frenchy keeps up the front of a cookie shop in the store. The cookie shop soon becomes a financial success, where people wait patiently in line for 30 minutes or more just to buy some cookies. Things go awry for Ray & company when they miscalculate the tunnel and pop out in a clothing store., They are caught by a cookie-loving cop who offers to not turn them in, if he can work for the cookie company.

Main Cast

• Woody Allen .... Ray Winkler
• Tracey Ullman .... Frances 'Frenchy' Winkler
• Hugh Grant .... David Grant
• Elaine May .... May Sloan
• Michael Rapaport .... Denny Doyle
• Tony Darrow .... Tommy Beal
• Jon Lovitz .... Benny Borkowshi
• Carolyn Saxon .... Candy Salesperson
• Sam Josepher .... Real Estate Agent
• Lawrence Howard Levy .... Dynamite Dealer
• Diane Bradley .... Cookie Store Customer
• Crystal Field .... Cookie Store Customer
• Cindy Carver .... Cookie Store Customer
• Ray Garvey .... Cookie Store Customer
• Bill Gerber .... Cookie Store Customer

Full Cast & Credits

Film Remarks

After a run of serious-tinged comedies like Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, and Sweet and Lowdown, Woody Allen turns to pure farce with the lightweight, appealing Small Time Crooks, the sunniest film Allen's made in years. Doing a 180 from his nebbishy intellectual persona, Allen plays a less-than-smart ex-con named Ray, who can't even keep a dishwasher job and is perennially supported by his wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman). When Ray hatches a plot to lease a storefront near a bank and tunnel into the bank's vault, Frenchy is skeptical about putting their life savings behind the scheme, especially after meeting Ray's dim-bulb trio of support (Michael Rapaport, Jon Lovitz, and Tony Darrow, all sublimely ridiculous) and learning she's supposed to provide the front by opening up a cookie store. Soon enough, their get-rich-quick scheme pays off, but not the way they anticipated, and they're suddenly swimming in money and bad taste.

All of Allen's farcical shenanigans are basically a setup for a look at Ray's and Frenchy's diverging paths--she wants culture and upper-class acceptance, he wants pizza in front of the TV and poker with his pals. Soon, the lowbrow Frenchy enlists a fortune-digging art broker (Hugh Grant) to make her a lady, and Allen plans a high society robbery with the help of Frenchy's dimwit cousin (Elaine May, who makes an art form of comic stupidity). It's absolutely refreshing to see Allen making a blithely happy film after wrestling with angst over the past few years; watching Allen play a dumb schlemiel is a treat that's been sorely missed. And in Ullman he's found a leading lady who can match him line for line; she wisely resists the urge to overplay Frenchy's crassness and comes up with a finely modulated characterization that makes her relationship with Ray the film's warm, heartfelt core. We'd almost forgotten Woody Allen could be this fun and goofy; it's good to see that part of him back in form.

--Mark Englehart -- from Amazon.com

Small Time Crooks Film Trivia & Awards

Many fans already know that Small Time Crooks was Woody Allen's first film in a five-film deal with DreamWorks. But did you also know....

Budget: $18m (USA)

$17.071m (USA), UKP 592,675 (UK), EUR 2,931,948 (Spain), $1.92m (France)
Release Date: May 19, 2000 (USA), November 30, 2000 (Germany), December 5, 2000 (Spain), December 6, 2000 (France), December 15, 2000 (Italy), December 1, 2000 (UK), March 8, 2002 (Sweeden)