Amy Adler Dick Harper (George Segal) and Jane, his wife (Jane Fonda) believe themselves to be living the high life. Dick has a great job and they are just putting the landscaping and pool into their dream house. But, alas, Dick gets fired by his asinine boss (Ed McMahon) and they are quickly behind on payments. Although Dick signs up for unemployment and gets it, its still crazy hard to pay any of the bills. Also, when Dick hilariously tries to moonlight as a gypsy song and dance man, his act is caught by the State officials and his income is cut off. No other jobs in the aerospace industry come along. That's when Jane gets the zany idea to try holding up businesses and doing other shady crimes to make ends meet. They even take the offerings of an obviously crooked evangelist ( an hilarious Dick Gautier) as he starts spouting off some VERY UNCHRISTIAN sentences. When they find out Dick's former boss is a cheater, too, D and J make plans to fix him but good and vastly increase their incomes. Can they pull it off? This adorable movie is a comedy classic that everyone will like. After a string of very serious roles, like Klute, Fonda chose to show her funny side again and she's great. So is Segal, who has never been more likable or attractive. Gautier, McMahon, and all the supporting cast is quite nice, too. Also, you will like the sets, costumes, script and energetic direction. This is fun, fun, fun, indeed, with Dick and Jane.

classicsoncall Well, Bonnie and Clyde they ain't. I recall this movie getting a lot of fanfare when it was first released back in 1977, hard to believe it'll be forty years old soon as I write this. Today was the first time I watched it and it was sort of underwhelming. I've never seen Ed McMahon in a principal movie role before so that was new for me. George Segal and Jane Fonda had the right chemistry to pull off their roles here, but a lot of times I thought the story was forced and didn't ring true to character. The stereotypical use of black and Hispanic actors in the picture would never pass muster today, though I don't generally have a problem with those kinds of portrayals when used to comic effect.Something I'd like to point out that really has nothing to do with the movie itself, but I've noticed this in other pictures as well. I generally turn on captioning when watching films so I don't miss any nuance in the dialog, and fairly consistently I find that any words that might be considered controversial are 'X'ed out. So for this picture, any time someone uses Dick Harper's (Segal) first name, it appears in captioning as 'XXXX'. You can do the translation, but the only thing that it does is draw more attention to the more prurient use of the word. I have to laugh every time it happens.I guess you can have some fun with this one in a Seventies nostalgic kind of way, but for me it wasn't very memorable at all. I actually know a married couple whose names are Dick and Jane who are friends of mine, and managed to reference the film the last time we got together. It was for a Happy Together concert tour we went to featuring a bunch of bands from the Sixties and Seventies, so at least we kept it in the same era as the picture.

willmcneil I waited a long time to finally see what I thought was going to be a fun caper flick and was shocked to discover shoddy direction, awkward dialogue, a lackluster pace, unmotivated slapstick gags and an overall coarseness that permeated the film throughout. Just not funny! The sets looked cheap, the costumes by the usually excellent Donfeld are garish and distracting. Even the title song is annoying. The whole children's book characters doesn't come close to representing the married couple whose life is turned upside down when he loses his job. For a film that seems to aim a dart at the unfairness of welfare and unemployment systems, the filmmakers have no problem in being unfair themselves, allowing Hispanic, black and gay stereotypes played at such a cruel level. The look of the film resembles any episode of Love American Style. This is not a compliment. Tacky seventies fashions abound in this world of white collar theft that only lends an air of implausibility to every situation. Outside of a clever initial idea, and two capable stars in Jane Fonda and George Segal, this dated exercise in social commentary comes off as forced and mean spirited to minorities, especially to gay people. If you want a better caper film, you're better off with The Hot Rock with George Segal and Robert Redford or What's Up Doc with Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand. Now that's funny!

gwcohn-2 I saw this movie in the theaters back in 1977 and it is one of my favorites.The chemistry between George Segal and Jane Fonda is good and there are some very funny moments like when he tries to hold up an Afro-American bar and they just look at him and ask "When did they start busing the white robbers to the black neighborhoods?" The other crack that was risqué for the time is when Dick shoves the pistol in his waistband and screams. Jane sweetly looks at him and says, "Don't go off half-cocked."Dicks career as a car thief isn't going very well as even his aerospace knowledge can't seem to help him hot wire a car. Jane points to a convertible next to the car he is try to steal and he says, "I don't know anything about foreign cars." She says, "I think you can handle this one. The keys are in it." And off they go in a 1974 Jaguar XK-E convertible. Later at the party, someone is admiring his Jaguar and he cracks, "I took one for a test drive and loved it."Ed McMahon is great as the drunken manager firing everyone, playing off his reputation from the Johnny Carson show and connections with Budweiser as their spokesman.It's really a very funny movie for it's time and wears well with age. The remake with Jim Carrey is nearly unwatchable. I have both on DVD and haven't been able to watch the remake more than once.