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Fun with Dick and Jane By Marshall Fine
Jane Fonda was so respected as a serious actress that her comedy chops
sometimes were overlooked. But it should be remembered that her first real
hits (Barefoot in the Park, Cat Ballou) were comedies. This
underrated 1977 outing also played for laughs, though it had social-satire
underpinnings that still ring true. Fonda and George Segal play an
upwardly mobile couple in the time before yuppies--think of them as
protoyuppies. But their status-oriented existence suffers what could be a
fatal blow when hubby is maneuvered out of his job. Broke and unemployed,
they become armed robbers--and discover that crime can pay for them to
live in the style to which they've become accustomed. Segal and Fonda have
a breezy ease as confused suburbanites who bring the same neurotic
thoroughness to crime that they do to their careers. But the script (whose
authors include Jerry Belson and Mordechai Richler) never uses either the
Robin Hood angle or any other angle that could sustain a sharp edge; as a
result, the comedy winds up more cute than knowing.
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