Funny Money

In January of 2007 this movie debuted in limited release on four screens, pulled in less than $2000, and hopefully those few people demanded a refund.

The director and the cast should have paniced sometime during filming when it became clear that the movie had only one joke, not amusing the first time around, but repeated over and over in every scene until I finally had to give up and switch away to a re-run of a Jeopardy game.

I liked Chevy Chase early in his career in TV and film, but his talents have dissipated even more quickly than his hair. He walks thru this film with no flair or style whatsoever. This has been all too common in some of his later efforts.

A sad waste of time for everyone involved, especially the viewer.

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.

"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!

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?)

Now Chevy Chase may not have done a classic comedy in this movie but this movie has got to be close to being a great comedy if not being a great comedy. The movie is about a guy who does the same boring thing every day and then mixes up a bag with a robber and finds himself rich. This movie has around 31 jokes in it and they are pretty much all funny and even though some are very hit and miss most of them are great enough to be classic Chevy Chase comedy. This movie is not quite as good as Fletch or Caddyshack but it is really quite good and overall I think that this movie is a really funny movie that deserves a high praise so I rate it 83% and under the reference of "watch at all costs" comedy.