Touche pas à mon gazon

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 ****

George Segal and Jane Fonda are not he kind of actors you would expect to find in this movie with low brow humour that is a delightfully guilty addiction. Dirty jokes, a rancid social commentary and the glib life of bad mid to late 1970's economics drive 'Fun With Dick and Jane' to a level of crime that makes you root for them. Three scenes stand out. Watch for them! One has Segal practicing his stick up routine in the mirror dressed totally in black with a nylon wrapped over his head. Another one has Fonda visiting her conservative parents to ask for financial help and her father turning her down with an evangelical sermon and Dick and Jane's first stick up at a cheap motel. This movie has some slapstick that is hard to resist.

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.

This is certainly my favorite show for both George Segal and Jane Fonda. They are marvelous as folks trying to make ends meet (by hook OR crook) in the face of unemployment. Their hijinks are marvelous, as they exhaust ALL the possibilities for humor in the search for employment.

Especially memorable are the fashion show, the celebratory dinner, and the performance of Carmen. But good spots in this film are too frequent to even cite!

In these trying times, when American's financial world is going down the drain, and the dreams, aspirations and livelihood of millions of Americans are evaporating, a film like this one is just what a despairing audience needs. The story of the American Middle Class in jeopardy and is aptly personified in this movie, called 'Fun With Dick and Jane.' There have been several other films based on this theme, but for my money, the stars of George Segal and Jane Fonda are solidly entrenched and not easily replaced by later film couples. Segal stars' as Mr. Richard Harper a Aero-space executive who as his boss (Ed McMahon) states is the very best at his job, but like so many other corporate executives is no longer needed. His position is one which promised security, but has fallen on hard times. Thus he soon learns he is unemployed. The fun begins when Harper and his wife try to adjust to the downward spiral of economic descent. They like so many Americans take what they can get and object poverty is not attractive at all. Thus, when the bottom is ready to engulf them, they turn to a life of crime. Can they do any worse? Not being prepared, they soon realize, they are not cut out to be white collar criminals and decide to quit. That's when opportunity beckons once again. A great movie and one fitted to our time. ****