(2000) Director/writer Woody Allen's small-time comedy is a box of Belgian chocolates, full of cuteness and clever lines, a scheme to break into your heart and steal all your laughs.

Married to the former Frenchy Fox (Tracey Ullman), aka The Topless Wonder, Ray Winkler (Allen) comes up with a foolproof plan to rob a bank so that they can retire to Florida; but she's content with being a manicurist. Ray's buddies, Tommy (Tony Darrow) and Denny (Michael Rapaport), are all for Ray's idea of purchasing a pizza parlor next door to a bank and tunneling underground into the vault. Unimpressed with the crew of conspirators, Frenchy remarks of one: "His brain's got potholes."

After Ray eventually convinces Frenchy to put up their life savings of $6000 as his share, the guys find out that Mrs Nettie Goldberg has beat them to making the buy. However, Mrs Goldberg turns out to be a former jailbird pal of Ray's, Benny (Jon Lovitz) from cellblock 8, an arsonist, who joins the gang. When Ray reminds Benny he'd been nicknamed "The Brain" in the joint, Benny says it was sarcastic.

As a front for the operation, Frenchy opens her Sunset Bake Shop; her cookies become wildly popular, so popular she needs to hire her cousin May Sloan (Elaine May) to help her keep up with the demand. Meanwhile after a few weeks of drilling and digging, the fellows get lost and break through the floor of a dress shop; worse, the neighborhood police officer has caught on to their intrigue - by making sense of May's offhand comments - foiling their half-baked effort. Instead of collaring the foursome, the cop wants a piece of the action above ground, where Frenchy's making real dough with her cookie sales, and says the magic word: "Franchise."

A year later Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes concludes a segment on the baking empire of Sunset Farms and its cookie mogul: "There's no accounting for the public's taste." Trying to earn the respect of "bright, cultured, refined" people in society, Frenchy becomes Frances, a patron of the arts, but her lack of sophistication and education remain a barrier to being taken seriously. So she asks David (Hugh Grant), an art dealer with plenty of taste and class, to give her a crash course in art appreciation, theater, literature, music, wines, jewelry.

For a short while Ray tags along, answering David's inquiry in a museum as to what distinguishes a particular painting from another by saying, "The frame on this one is bigger," when David intended to elicit recognition of perspective. In front of author Henry James's house, Frenchy mistakenly criticizes Ray for not recognizing the name of the big-band leader; David corrects her, saying she meant Harry James. Frustrated with Ray's refusal to appreciate the finer things in life - he hates being rich, preferring turkey meatballs and cheeseburgers to caviar and truffles - she warns him: "If I grow and you stay as stupid as you are, we're gonna have problems, Ray."

In order to improve her vocabulary, Frances memorizes the As in her dictionary and seasons her speech with them. When David, with an underplot to hustle her, suggests a tour of the European continent to see first hand opera houses, churches, and ancient ruins, Ray, who has been hanging out with May, balks, telling his wife she can have "custody of all the chocolate chips."

In the end, unlike many of Allen's films, the funnyman fumbles the tumblers; the humor he wants to exchange for genuine laughter is artificial, a few gaudy guffaws and sparkly teasers, unworthy of your heart's cachinnation. The cookies are good, though.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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