Small Time Crooks

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A delicious comedy that starts out promisingly as a pleasant gag comedy but then turns unexpectedly into a bright social satire.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Sunnier and sillier than most of Allen's recent work, makes its belly laughs heartwarming. It's a most winning movie about losers.

Film.com Tom Keogh

This is vintage Allen, his powers intact after a string of increasingly cranky, creaky films in the last few years.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Handsome as all Allen films are, and it proceeds with the brisk, sophisticated air of throwaway confidence and lack of pretense that we expect from the contemporary master of grown-up comedy.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The plot is lively and the dialogue packs many good laughs.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

The latest from Woody Allen is an enjoyable trifle -- but Tracey Ullman and Elaine May walk off with the picture.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Allen's funniest, least sour outing in nearly a decade is a small movie with a tidy payoff. The movie gives vulgarity a good name.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Breezy, enjoyable romp gratifyingly zigzags in directions that aren't apparent at the outset and features some intriguingly personal subtext for longtime Woody watchers.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

In this sweet, funny wisp of a movie, Mr. Allen shucks off his fabled angst and returns in spirit to those wide-eyed days of yesteryear, before Chekhov, Kafka and Ingmar Bergman invaded his creative imagination.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The Woodman has recovered his common touch. On him, it looks good.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Allen's movies specialize in contemplating the notion that money can somehow remove vulgarity or produce gentility. Small Time Crooks may conclude quite conventionally that money can't buy you everything, but most of it flirts even more conventionally with the opposite premise.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Allen has avoided his usual stable of jokes and one-liners, and the result is a film that feels and looks fresh from the maestro of urban angst.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Stooge-filled farce offers low laughs but lacks a point.

USA Today Mike Clark

Though this is a tough movie to dislike, it plays more like a second draft than a final product.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Dumb as they (allegedly) are, the characters in Small Time Crooks are smarter, edgier and more original than the dreary crowd in so many new comedies.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's the kind of movie you can settle into, secure in the expectation that you can steal from it more than a little vintage Allen fun.

Film.com Robert Horton

Feels like a first draft, in need of toning, pruning, and a little old-fashioned discipline. As an outline, the picture is full of possibilities.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

Allen produces a lovable, relaxed--although not uproarious--comedy.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Diverting and provides a satisfying alternative to teen-oriented summer comedy.

LA Weekly Steven Mikulan

Small Time Crooks is definitely minor Allen that, nevertheless, offers a welcome riposte to the current national obsession with getting rich.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Ullman and May make something intermittently memorable of an otherwise minor film.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

For all its wispy fun, Small Time Crooks still tilts, with little-guy stubbornness, at windmills in Allen's mind.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Allen's most amiable, breeziest comedy in years.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Petty larceny - but Allen's fans won't want to miss this lowbrow caper.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Can be recommended even if just for the presence of Elaine May, who turns in her most charmingly ditzy performance since "A New Leaf."

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Only Elaine May shines, in a weird and wonderful turn. Her loopy character has such a struck-by-lightning demeanor that she's always delightfully off in her own comic orbit even in the tritest of scenes.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This thin, clichéd comedy of crime and social climbing contains some scattered laughs and whole lot of padding.

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

It's a sweet little snack of a movie that leaves the heavier courses for some other outing.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Allen was out of his element in creating characters who feel like East Coast cousins of the Clampetts, and his dialogue has never been more banal or forced.

Slate David Edelstein

Sour and mostly feeble, with a depressingly curdled worldview. It bears no resemblance to Allen's surreal, open-ended comedies.

TNT RoughCut Susannah Breslin

It's a comedic caper with a slap-your-head-in-kookiness that ends up making Allen, at this age, seem like an old man desperately still trying to ham it up at the dinner table.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A pleasant frolic, but fairly inconsequential in terms of the overall Allen output.