Fun with Dick and Jane

I agree with the reviewer who said that George Segal and Jane Fonda are an unlikely couple to star in this movie. But, oh, does it work! This is one of my top ten all-time favorite movies. The humor is a bit more subtle than the Jim Carey remake and I happen to prefer that kind of humor.

The premise of the movie would be hard to beat at any rate. It really works as a comedy situation. Some of the scenes in this movie will absolutely make you roar with laughter.

If you want a good laugh on a Friday night...rent this one. :) Or better yet, buy yourself a copy so you can watch it again and again. It really is that funny.

Fun with Dick and Jane serves as an entertaining satire on the upper middle class standards of living, produced in the presumably stifling corporate environment of the mid-1970's. A drunken Ed McMahon lays off overpaid executive George Segal. Lovely wife Jane Fonda, who handles matters fairly well when their landscapers tear up all their unpaid work, finds herself forced to find some source of income to maintain their expensive lifestyles – it would seem Segal's unemployment only takes them so far. Fonda secures a job as a model while Segal manages to lose his benefits when a gay unemployment officer spots him working as a bit character in the opera. When Fonda loses her apparently not very secure job, the now poor couple head out to get a loan. There they stumble upon a holdup, get taken hostage, and somehow wind up with all the loot. Enjoying their first taste of crime, the pair bungles their way through a series of hold-ups and eventually become near pros. They manage to restore their house to its previous splendor, cockily inviting McMahon to a chic pool party so he can have a gander at their newfound success. Of course, a sip only gets you thirsty, so the greedy couple find themselves faced with the quest for the Big Gulp. The story is funny for the most part, with memorable moments akin to Segal discussing music with a record store clerk during a robbery. There's healthy dose of anarchy for good measure, with destruction happily joining hands with the nouveau pauvre and the will to get back what has been lost. By having its characters steal primarily from the allegedly greedy or malevolent – the phone company, loan sharks, the Climax Court Motel – the film does maintains some shaky moral standards. In addition, Fun contains a few instances of dated racism, with jabs at homosexuals, Hispanics and African-Americans (who hold a pajama dance party in McMahon's office as Segal and Fonda crack his safe, their loud drill protected by the celebrants' louder music). A startlingly racist part goes to Hank Garcia, as an unemployed cleaner who works a bad influence on Segal. Nevertheless, the film on the whole manages to function well as a thoroughly entertaining comedy, with an ample dose of anarchism for good measure.

It's a sign of the times (i.e., the 1970s) when Dick and Jane rob the telephone company at gunpoint and all the customers applaud. It's distinctly un-PC now, but very funny back then. As usual, it's a "Jane Fonda movie" that thinly conceals a social message underneath its comic scenario, but I didn't feel it got too preachy until near the finish-line. George Segal works very easily with Fonda, and there are some hugely funny scenes after an arduous opening wherein Segal loses his cushy job. The desperation of unemployment is touched upon briefly (for a comic effect), but there are some stabs at social commentary that do not work (as with two bad caveats involving a transsexual and a man with no vocal chords). But for every foul ball there comes along something fresh and groovy, like the sequence where Fonda acts her way out of neighborhood humiliation once the gardeners start rolling up her lawn, or when the gentleman from Food Stamps shows up at an inappropriate moment (a ritzy family dinner) confessing he just had a Big Mac and a Coke. **1/2 from ****

When the executive engineer Dick Harper (George Segal) is unexpectedly fired by the president Charlie Blanchard (Ed McMahon) of the Taft Aerospace, company where he works, his wife Jane Harper (Jane Fonda) and him get completely broken, full of debts including the mortgage of their fancy house and without means to support their lifestyle. Dick unsuccessfully tries to find a new position, while Jane looks for a job and cuts their costs to the minimum. While using the insufficient unemployment paycheck of the social security to survive, they contract a loan in a bank. There is a heist in the bank and Jane accidentally steals some money from the thieves, and the couple decides to robber to survive and maintain their social status.

"Fun with Dick and Jane" is a great amoral comedy that has not aged or dated. The politically incorrect story is delightful and very funny, and is a sharp critic to the American Dream, satirizing the hypocrite need of maintaining a status and also to the corruption related to the big business of the corporations. Jane Fonda is very beautiful and shows a great chemistry with George Segal. This is the first time that I watch this movie, which is an excellent entertainment. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Adivinhe Quem Vem Para Roubar?" ("Guess Who Is Coming to Robber?")

Consistently funny spoof of America's caste system from bottom to top. The Harpers (Fonda &Segal) are yuppies trying to hang on to middle-class status after Dick is fired from well-paying aerospace job. Increasingly desperate as creditors close in, they eventually turn to robbery, a clumsy Bonny and Clyde with country club credentials. Their early lame stickup efforts are particularly humorous.

There's no mistaking the subtext that takes a shot at about every rung on our economic ladder, from minority welfare cheaters to middle-class status seekers to upper-class hypocrisy. And throw in a shot at televangelist hucksters guarding their own loot. A couple points are easily overlooked. Note how Jane's wealthy dad refuses to help, lecturing them on the virtues of rugged individualism. Tellingly, this is the one scene without a humorous overlay. Note also that Dick's thanks for helping get a man on the moon is to get fired. Thus, it's declining profits, the logic of capitalist efficiency, that prevails over all else. Essentially, what storybook Dick and Jane find out is what it's like to survive on the margins, and since their tastes are elevated, it's an inflated margin.

Don't get me wrong. Thanks to both an excellent script and ace performances,the movie manages its many serious points in consistently humorous fashion. After all, we never expect Dick to actually use his stickup gun. He's too humorously inept, though he does get more skilled as time goes on. And catch how the now destitute Dick and Jane live in a rambling home with a bombed-out lawn and a pit for a pool. Now what will the neighbors say.

Big kudos to Segal who handles his difficult role in expert fashion, and also to Fonda who makes a perfect bickering soul mate and for being maybe the first woman to take a discreet leak on screen. McMahon too shines as the slick company president who smiles even while stabbing a guy's back. As an actor, he certainly proves he's more than Johnny's affable TV sidekick.

Anyway, in my little book, the 90-minutes succeeds on a number of levels, making it both really watchable and still relevant.