TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969) **1/2 Some moronic grad student has no doubt long since pompously postulated that this film contains the blueprint for all of Woody Allen's later work (i.e. all of his other original work, as this came first). That's somewhat right and also impossible. Woody pseudo-documentaries himself in a semi-celebrative but ultimately deprecating manner, Janet Margolin is the first insecure and psychologically dubious "Woody Girl," and Marvin Hamlisch provides a potpourri of music that fails to be appropriate in just the right ways. So there's a framework, but I disagree that we've just been repeating ourselves since the Big Bang. Woody's debut isn't as suave and sensual as his later efforts, lacking the integritous ambivalence of the urban jungles and big leagues. His timing is more representative of serial bisection here and the gags, however amusing, evoke misplaced bubble gum rather than torrents of all-encompassing forest fires of rain. Woody's genius is easy enough to detect, but I'm not sure if I'm ambivalent or not that he didn't do more work with Hamlisch. I mean, yeah, Woody is the master of comedic jazz accompaniment but his cuts are often so tasteful as to distort the hygienic synthesis of material and materiél. Hamlisch, on the other hand, simply cuts his with a pleasing isotope of saccharine.
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