Take the Money and Run (1969)

(YouTube Streaming, December 2019) When it comes to Woody Allen’s “earlier, funnier movies,” you can’t get much earlier nor much funnier than Take the Money and Run, his first real directorial effort. (While he’s credited as director on What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, that was more of a rearrangement and creative re-dubbing of an existing feature.)  A then-innovative mockumentary featuring a singularly inept bank robber (Allen, obviously), it’s really an excuse for him to throw in as much silliness as possible in a single movie. The jokes start early and seldom let up—and there’s a lot of physical comedy as well. Even at this early point, it’s easy to see the future direction of Allen’s career—the mockumentary form reused in Zelig (or, more generally, the experimentation with form that would reoccur especially in the first half of his career) and the gag-a-minute pacing of his earlier-funnier films. Perhaps more importantly, Take the Money and Run’s best sustained sequence has to do with his talking about romantic relationships, a leitmotif which would form the backbone of his best movies. It’s all wonderfully silly—and contemporary viewers will be surprised to hear a rearrangement of “Soul Bossa Nova” (better known as the Austin Powers theme these days) on the soundtrack. Not particularly ambitious, Take the Money and Run is nonetheless quite successful—it still gets its laughs.