Funny Money

"Funny Money" is a screwball comedy like they made in the sixties! One crazy situation after another! The first 30 minutes are slow! Then the pace gets fast! And when the pace gets faster and faster! The scenes get funnier by the minute! Most of the cast do a pretty good job! They all seem to have fun and it shows! The characters do really crazy things and sometimes it is too ridiculous! But because the characters are likable it is acceptable! I can understand the criticism of some reviewers! The first 30 minutes almost ruined the whole experience! It does have to placed in context of the movie! The first part is nothing but a setup for the crazy situations in the second part! This movie demands viewers to have some patience! When they do they will be rewarded! People forget that it is very hard to do comedy! And that producers have to think of several ways to draw an audience! I think they succeeded! The title suggest what the movie is:funny!

Henry Perkins (Chevy Chase) is been working at a fruit wax company for many years and he doesn't seem to be appreciate by his boss (Robert Loggia). In this day, Henry is also celebrating his birthday. Which his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) wants to planning a surprise birthday party for her husband. But when Henry accidentally switched his briefcase with a stranger from the subway. Herny finds $5 million on the briefcase that looks like his. Since Henry realizes quickly the situation of this problem. Since the mysterious guy, he accidentally switch his briefcase has his identity in it. Henry wants to leave the country with his struggling artist wife to Europe but the Perkins' only friends (Christopher McDonald and Alex Meneses) shows up his birthday party. But there's more to come... when Henry has problems with a sleazy corrupted police detective (Armand Assante), a taxi driver (Guy Torry) who doesn't like to be waiting, a clumsy police detective (Kevin Sussman), a very rich kinky woman named MM. Virginia (Rebecca Wisocky) who feels Henry's wife has some talent and the European mob boss known as Mr. Big (Zoltan Butuc) & his crew is searching for his briefcase.

Directed by Leslie Grief made an watchable but hardly funny farce. There's a few good laughs here but not much of it. The movie seems to have energy from his cast but the script also written by the director and Harry Basil is quite poor. The movie feels rushed, gags are not well executed and it is also badly filmed. Grief's wasted a capable good cast. I do believe Chase could be really funny actor but i think, it works best when he is in the hands of a good comedic filmmaker like Harold Ramis or John Landis. Ann Miller's performance is really irritating here. Since it's based on a stage play of the same title by Ray Cooney. I am sure, the stage play works much better than this misfired picture. It's certainly a nice try and it's more of a Curio film than entertainment. Too bad. (* ½/*****).

With a title of "Funny Money" you ought to be able to work out that this is a film that doesn't take itself seriously ... and neither should you (take it seriously). If it helps, forget the fact that Chevy Chase is playing the lead (lots of big actors play direct-to-video films anyway), and see it more as a feature-length TV episode. There are belly-laughter moments. Just don't be expecting a different kind of film based on your experience of contemporary comedy film (for example gross-out humour). This film is less "slapstick", it is farce; that means the humor lies in lots of things happening very quickly continually upsetting the situation. The beginning of the film is not so hot but is necessary to set up the premise for the rest of the story. So basically, stick with it to when it gets to the main act.

Overview: A frivolous, fun and funny 97 minutes. Don't go expecting the scale and budget of a theatrical release.

Chevy Chase was his normal self and there were some humerous bits in the movie, but all in all I found the movie to be boring and not very funny at all. If you like Chevy then I guess its ok, but he's made better movies.

As a big fan of Chevy Chase I was interested to watch this film and as with most of the previous comments of this film I agree that it is certainly no "Fletch" or early "Vacation" film. But the point the most people seem to be missing is that this film is an adaptation of a farcical play written by (British Playwright) Ray Cooney and as such any attempt to dissect the plot is akin to dissecting the plot of an absurdist play (see "Rhinoceros" - starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel) - there is no point.

I think it is a reasonably good comedy although in general I find farce frustrating - namely for the reasons that annoyed most of the people who have criticised this film i.e. plot makes no sense, situations that could easily be dissolved are allowed to carry on out of control etc. Essentially this film has been created to resemble a stage production i.e small ensemble of core characters and a minimal number of sets.

I think the main characters are fairly strong and the dialogue and interaction between the characters is fast paced and funny although I do think it takes 20/30 minutes to get going.

As for the cast in general it was good and I actually thought that Penelope Ann Miller's character was excellent and she played it very well. Chevy Chase's character was also good and his interaction with both Armand Assante's and Christopher McDonald's characters brought the most laughs.

The bottom line is if you do not like farce you will probably not like this film. I also do think that in general any film that is an adaption of a stage play or remake is always destined to fail especially if the original was not American (a good example would be the remake of "The Ladykillers" - the big question being why did it need to be remade?)