Overlooked Movies: $

First, a little personal reminiscence.  When Judy and I moved to Brownwood, Texas, for my first teaching gig after grad school, it was quite a culture shock to go from a place like Austin, with lots of movie theaters, to a place that had only one.  This explains how we came to see The Legend of Boggy Creek, but that's another story.  Not too long after our move, a new duplex theater opened at a little shopping center, and $ was the first film show in one half of the duplex.  We were looking forward to the movie, but we didn't see it.  The theater flooded.  A problem with the air-conditioning, I believe.  

That struck me as an interesting coincidence because it was the second time I'd been to opening night when the theater flooded.  The first was many years before, when the new theater in my hometown had opened.  The a/c was the problem then, too.  

And at yet another time I was in a theater that flooded.  It was a fairly new one, though I don't believe this was opening night.  It was my freshman year in college, and the student union theater flooded because of flash flooding all over the city.  What is it with me and flooding in theaters, anyway?

Now to our regularly scheduled feature.  You can see the problem with this movie immediately, right?  Who names a movie $?  Maybe back in the early '70s when this movie came out, the studio thought that a movie starring Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty didn't even need a title to be a hit.  They were wrong, though.

Not that Beatty and Hawn (both with wonderful '70s haircuts) aren't a delight.  They are, and so are Scott Brady and Gert Frobe (with lots of little Goldfinger in-jokes).  The plot's not bad.  It's a caper, with Beatty stealing from criminals, aided by Hawn's hooker with a heart of gold.  Naturally the crooks aren't happy, and complications ensue. The film's finale is one really long chase scene, followed by a double twist.  Or is it a triple twist?  I don't remember.  

This is one of those movies that didn't do well at the time, or at least not nearly as well as expected.  But it's fun and worth a look if you need some lighthearted entertainment, as who doesn't now and then?