[.ca] Funny Money

Better British:
Some things just sound better with a British accent, and that's the problem with this American adaptation of the farcical play by Ray Cooney. Obviously intended for the British stage and audience, the plot is about the complications that arise when the lead character Henry Perkins (an ancient looking Chevy Chase) accidentally switches briefcases with a tough-looking guy on the train, and discovers that he is the new custodian of a large and undoubtedly illegal fortune in notes and bearer bonds. Perkins decides to take the money and run, but his young wife (Penelope Ann Miller) remains unconvinced. The arrival of an undercover cop (Armand Assante), and a comedian moonlighting as a cab driver (or vice versa), and then their friends Vic and Betty, followed by another police officer, and then even more minor characters, leads to an amazing and absolutely befuddling sequence of variable identities, assumption-leaping and confusion that could only come from the pen of funnyman Cooney. What the film lacked was the dry and bawdy (yet always hysterically funny) British comedic inflections and delivery, which made some of the truly great moments fall rather flat. The cast does their best given the Americanization of the plot, but this would have been a heck of a movie with a British cast. This version - 3.5 stars Amanda Richards