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'Fun With Dick and Jane' steals laughs on road to revenge

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Finally, some escapist fun to get us through the holidays.

"Fun With Dick and Jane," which is based on an innocuous 1977 comedy of the same name starring Jane Fonda and George Segal, has plenty of sass, even more silliness and something to say about the current climate of corporate irresponsibility.

Sony Pictures

'Fun With Dick and Jane'

B-

The verdict: More fun than you might expect.

Director: Dean Parisot
Starring: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins, Angie Harmon
Run time: 90 minutes
Release date: Dec. 21
Rating: PG-13 for brief language, some sexual humor and occasional humorous drug references.
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In fact, at the very end, before the closing credits, the movie gives "special thanks" to Enron, Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco and a long list of execs who bailed on their companies and left their employees holding the bag.

Dick (Jim Carrey, who also produced) and Jane (Tea Leoni) Harper are a one-kid, two-career family who are doing well enough to afford a new lawn and a Hispanic housekeeper, Blanca (Gloria Garayua). One running joke is, their son spends so much more time with her than with them, he mostly speaks Spanish.

One day, Dick is summoned to the vaunted 51st floor at Globodyne and informed by the company's mercurial president (Alec Baldwin, who's becoming the go-to name for oleaginous executives) that he's just been made VP of communications.

Two hours later, while Dick is on television defending the company, Globodyne goes belly up and Dick is suddenly unemployed. So is Jane, who quit her unpleasant job as soon as she heard about the promotion. The next thing you know, the lawn is being repo'd, and they're paying Blanca in household appliances.

When hourly wage jobs as a greeter at a superstore (him) and a guinea pig for Botox testers (her) don't work out, Dick and Jane decide robbery is the way to go. They hold up a head shop, a coffee joint, even case a bank. Pretty soon, they're back living in the manner to which they were accustomed.

Their next target? Baldwin, who's been blithely shooting ducks on his plantation while everyone else at Globodyne is either in jail or on the unemployment line.

Co-written by Judd Apatow, whose "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was an unexpected late summer hit, "Fun With Dick and Jane" doesn't pretend to be scathing social satire. But it could afford to be more biting. Preston Sturges can rest easy.

The film also feels stretched, even at 90 minutes. Segments involving illegal Mexican workers and a lunatic late-night attack by Dick on the neighbors' lawns feel more like filler than anything else.

But the picture's got a lot of nerve and verve, and the stars make an infinitely better couple than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." Carrey is working more in the mode of a young Dick Van Dyke than Ace Ventura. And Leoni is a gifted, likable, under-used actress who should probably be getting some of the roles that are going to Jennifer Aniston.

With disasters like "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" and "Rumor Has It..." and disappointments like "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Rent" haunting the multiplex, be grateful for small, flawed favors like "Fun With Dick and Jane."