Dick and Jane Harper (George Segal and Jane Fonda) were living the American dream, but when Dick's aerospace job got liquidated due to the fuzzy accounting of his boss Charlie Blanchard (Ed McMahon, and if you think I'm not doing a week of movies that Ed was in, you don't know me) and have to suddenly figure out how to save everything they have, even if Jane's parents believe that poverty is going to be the best lesson they can ever receive.
The best answer to their problems? A life of crime. While Dick and Jane try to keep the people they're stealing from to be those even more on the wrong side of the law than them, they still worry that they're getting too used to being criminals. Can they give it up? Or is the lure of easy money just too much?
This movie was based on a story by Gerard Gaiser, which was scripted by David Giler (who wrote Myra Breckinridge and The Parallax View, as well as serving as the producer and rewriter of Alien as part of his partnership with Walter Hill), Jerry Belson (who popularized the line, "When you assume..." in a script he wrote for The Odd Couple) and Mordecai Richler. It's directed by Ted Kotcheff, whose career is all over every genre, from the scares of Wake In Fright to the sports film North Dallas Forty, the original Rambo movie First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's.
That said - this has a homophobic scene followed by George Segal in blackface, so...1977 everybody. A year I was alive in, can remember and yes, it's even more racist today, so we've made progress. Not enough progress, but some.
The best answer to their problems? A life of crime. While Dick and Jane try to keep the people they're stealing from to be those even more on the wrong side of the law than them, they still worry that they're getting too used to being criminals. Can they give it up? Or is the lure of easy money just too much?
This movie was based on a story by Gerard Gaiser, which was scripted by David Giler (who wrote Myra Breckinridge and The Parallax View, as well as serving as the producer and rewriter of Alien as part of his partnership with Walter Hill), Jerry Belson (who popularized the line, "When you assume..." in a script he wrote for The Odd Couple) and Mordecai Richler. It's directed by Ted Kotcheff, whose career is all over every genre, from the scares of Wake In Fright to the sports film North Dallas Forty, the original Rambo movie First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's.
That said - this has a homophobic scene followed by George Segal in blackface, so...1977 everybody. A year I was alive in, can remember and yes, it's even more racist today, so we've made progress. Not enough progress, but some.