Synopsis
Virgil Starkwell is intent on becoming a notorious bank robber. Unfortunately for Virgil and his not-so-budding career, he is completely incompetent.
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Cast
- Woody AllenVirgil Starkwell
- Janet MargolinLouise
- Marcel HillaireFritz
- Jacquelyn HydeMiss Blair
- Lonny ChapmanJake - Convict
- Jan MerlinAl - Bank Robber
- James AndersonChain Gang Warden
- Howard StormFred
- Mark GordonVince
- Micil MurphyFrank
Recommendations
- 90
The New York Times
Allen has made a movie that is, in effect, a feature-length, two-reel comedy—something very special and eccentric and funny. - 70
Chicago Reader
Woody Allen's first film as a director, in which he plays Virgil Starkwell, Public Schmuck Number One. This ragged collection of gags and sketch fragments was reportedly pieced together from an incoherent mass of footage by ace film doctor Ralph Rosenblum. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run has some very funny moments, and you'll laugh a lot, but in the last analysis it isn't a very funny movie. It isn't really a movie at all. I suspect it's a list of a lot of things Woody Allen wanted to do in a movie someday, and the sad thing is he did them all at once. - 60
Empire
The life and crimes of Virgil Starkwell, a petty hoodlum who finds love with a laundress, Louise, in between botched blags and stints on a chain gang. - 60
Time Out London
Tale of the eagerly criminal career of Virgil Starkwell is as unpredictably structured as Annie Hall, if not yet anything like as sustained in tone and mood. But it has plenty of hilarious jokes and concepts, like the ventriloquists' dummies at prison visiting time, and the return home from a chain gang break with five shackled cons in tow. - 50
Variety
A few good laughs in an 85-minute film do not a comedy make. Basically a running gag about hero Allen's ineptitude as a professional crook, scatters its fire in so many directions it has to hit at least several targets. But satire on documentary coverage of criminal flop is overextended and eventually tiresome.
