Funny Money

What a delight to see Chevy Chase back on-screen again, with a great ensemble of hilarious actors. Director Leslie Grief does an excellent job of keeping the audience in stitches from the opening credits to the final Smile.

We saw this movie as the opening film of the 2006 Sarasota Film Festival, in a theater with 1700 other people. There is no question that the audience loved it. At times, the laughs were so loud and long that if you weren't paying close attention, you might have missed the next joke.

If you are looking for good, old-fashioned belly laughs, you won't be disappointed in this film. Kudos to Leslie Grief, Chevy Chase, Penelope Anne Miller, Armand Assante and Chris McDonald.

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.

With a title of "Funny Money" you ought to be able to work out that this is a film that doesn't take itself seriously ... and neither should you (take it seriously). If it helps, forget the fact that Chevy Chase is playing the lead (lots of big actors play direct-to-video films anyway), and see it more as a feature-length TV episode. There are belly-laughter moments. Just don't be expecting a different kind of film based on your experience of contemporary comedy film (for example gross-out humour). This film is less "slapstick", it is farce; that means the humor lies in lots of things happening very quickly continually upsetting the situation. The beginning of the film is not so hot but is necessary to set up the premise for the rest of the story. So basically, stick with it to when it gets to the main act.

Overview: A frivolous, fun and funny 97 minutes. Don't go expecting the scale and budget of a theatrical release.

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.

Henry Perkins (Chevy Chase) is been working at a fruit wax company for many years and he doesn't seem to be appreciate by his boss (Robert Loggia). In this day, Henry is also celebrating his birthday. Which his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) wants to planning a surprise birthday party for her husband. But when Henry accidentally switched his briefcase with a stranger from the subway. Herny finds $5 million on the briefcase that looks like his. Since Henry realizes quickly the situation of this problem. Since the mysterious guy, he accidentally switch his briefcase has his identity in it. Henry wants to leave the country with his struggling artist wife to Europe but the Perkins' only friends (Christopher McDonald and Alex Meneses) shows up his birthday party. But there's more to come... when Henry has problems with a sleazy corrupted police detective (Armand Assante), a taxi driver (Guy Torry) who doesn't like to be waiting, a clumsy police detective (Kevin Sussman), a very rich kinky woman named MM. Virginia (Rebecca Wisocky) who feels Henry's wife has some talent and the European mob boss known as Mr. Big (Zoltan Butuc) & his crew is searching for his briefcase.

Directed by Leslie Grief made an watchable but hardly funny farce. There's a few good laughs here but not much of it. The movie seems to have energy from his cast but the script also written by the director and Harry Basil is quite poor. The movie feels rushed, gags are not well executed and it is also badly filmed. Grief's wasted a capable good cast. I do believe Chase could be really funny actor but i think, it works best when he is in the hands of a good comedic filmmaker like Harold Ramis or John Landis. Ann Miller's performance is really irritating here. Since it's based on a stage play of the same title by Ray Cooney. I am sure, the stage play works much better than this misfired picture. It's certainly a nice try and it's more of a Curio film than entertainment. Too bad. (* ½/*****).