AWARDS AND HONORS:

Allen was nominated for both Male Comedy Performance and Male New Face in the Motion Picture Exhibitors' Laurel Awards, and the screenplay was nominated for Best Comedy by the Writers Guild of America.

THE CRITICS CORNER

"The nicest surprise of Take the Money and Run is that it shows [Allen] has been able to compliment visually the word-oriented humor of the writer-performer. ... Allen has made a movie that is, in effect, a feature-length, two-reel comedy-something very special and eccentric and funny." – Vincent Canby, New York Times, August 19, 1969.

"Like a nightclub monologue, the movie has a sort of loose-leaf form. You have a feeling that scenes and, perhaps, entire reels could be taken out and rearranged without making much difference in total impact, which is good because it all looks so effortless. Allen and Mickey Rose...have illustrated in fine, absurd detail the world that Allen has been talking about all these years." – Vincent Canby, New York Times, August 24, 1969.

"In all fairness, maybe I hit Take the Money in the wrong mood. But I doubt it. You keep wanting the movie to be funnier than it is-but it isn't. A lot of reviewers think it's the comic masterpiece of the decade." – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, October 6, 1969.

"Its tale of the eagerly criminal career of Virgil Starkwell is as unpredictably structured as Annie Hall [1977], if not yet anything like as sustained in tone and mood. But it has plenty of hilarious jokes and concepts." – Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide (Penguin Books, 2000).

"A torrent of middling visual gags, not the star's best vehicle." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run" has some very funny moments, and you'll laugh a lot, but in the last analysis it isn't a very funny movie. It isn't really a movie at all. I suspect it's a list of a lot of things Woody Allen wanted to do in a movie someday, and the sad thing is he did them all at once....The blackouts before the credits are particularly good. And other scenes (notably Woody's tangle with a prison shirt-folding machine, and his escape attempt while chained to five other prisoners) are hilarious. But the editing should have been done more ruthlessly, to get rid of things that seemed funny at the time but aren't funny in the movie..." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.

"..an often hilarious parody of both old-style gangster movies and character documentaries...Picture has less structure than Allen's later films and there's only one major scene - when he prepares for his first date with Margolin - where he gets laughs by presenting a side of his soon to be familiar "Woody Allen" character...An auspicious debut, but nothing to prepare us for Allen's later masterpieces." - Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic.

"Spiced up with a little of everything, it's clear that Allen intended Take the Money and Run as a showcase for his comical talents. Throughout he engulfs the camera in a torrent of passing jokes, good only for a laugh then disposed of without regret. These tend to stick to the traditional physical and visual lines established in other films of the genre, while Allen still places his personal spin on the proceedings. The contrast with his later, more cerebral, work is stark, though even here some of Allen's neuroses can be glimpsed in nascent form...Ultimately, Take the Money and Run is unsatisfying to audiences brought up on Allen's later works. It's full of good ideas but without the insight that has come with greater maturity, the movie's an empty ride. The chaos, satire and slapstick help of course, so overall perhaps Take the Money and Run is worth catching as a rare curiosity of Allen's formative years." - Damien Cannon, www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/

Compiled by Rob Nixon & Jeff Stafford