FUN WITH DICK AND JANE (1977) **1/2 Strange hybrid of ambitious situational ethics, political cynicism, celebration of variations on a theme of survival instinct, and superficial storytelling. Without Jane Fonda you got a dull film with one poetic street scene, written by someone who wanted to say more but didn't quite know how. With Jane it's probably realized to the extent that they want to tell it-I mean, absorbing too much knowledge can really be a downer, especially right after the bicentennial. Jane's wry, parenthetically sultry, comedic timing builds to moments of perfection and insight, yet she's bourgeosie housewife enough to leave you willing to believe that she married George Segal (and not even in one of his better roles) and is willing to keep him. I think it's the scene, early, where she's drinking a Coors. Right away you know that she's playing someone else, which is nice because it relieves you from wishing her nothing but the best, and there are some trials and tribulations ahead. Insights run towards visual aphorisms, but shine white light on the top of the dialectic of corporate and welfare fraud, religious balance sheets, the economic obscenity of pornography, the creativity and philanthropical instincts of loan officers (Allan Miller, well done), the blinding idiocy of love for one's devoutly bereft husband (Mary Jackson!), and the respective party instincts of rich white people and poor black ones. Ed McMahon's in it, but doesn't laugh, which may explain the entire thing. The cleverness isn't sustained, but it achieves the feel of a joke that goes on too long because the guy telling it isn't quite sure where the punchline is. Which turns out to be the case. I love casting Jane as a bank robber and, being how she's way too deep to be Patty Hearst, is too bubbly emotive (even wryly, now that's an actress) to do Ulrike Meinhof, would have been too strong a Bonnie for Warren Beatty's Clyde, and probably wouldn't have been into bank robbing for any reason besides politics...but that's all that politics is at a certain level, isn't it? Or is it? This film doesn't lay a strong or broad enough foundation to engage that question, but does leave you with a sense that you should be thankful for that failure.