Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Really Surprised!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Things that aren't around any more... ethnic slurs (even the title is an insult!) and... old scenes of san francisco. The 1989 earthquake knocked down the embarcadero highway, which is featured several times in this fun throwback. James Caan and Alan Arkin are partners in this amateur hour detective work film... clearly setting Arkin up for "The In-Laws", with Peter Falk. The GOOD version, from 1979. Arkin plays the nervous partner, who doesn't appreciate the constant, nutty antics of his partner; SO similar to his role in The In-Laws. It's also kind of funny to hear Rhoda (Valerie Harper!) speaking bent español. so mean to the LGBT character. and Loretta Swit is in here as the wife of the mafia boss. Director Richard Rush only did a couple more after this one. It's pretty fun. Funny, without trying to be funny. Pretty good. It IS available on dvd, but it's so politically incorrect, you probably WON'T find it on any cable channel. Lot's of car smash-ups and physical humor, but there's enough verbal banter to keep it entertaining.

Richard Rush directed this (intentionally?) uneven blend of comic-macho clumsiness and violent police action set in San Francisco. Two cops (well-cast buddy couple, Alan Arkin and James Caan) bust chops and wreck cars in an attempt to nab a numbers-racketeer. Rush is attracted to a messy visual style--cajoling comedy combined with bursts of bloody violence--yet the blood is cartoon-red, a signal to us this is all in good fun. One of the villains is an evil transvestite, another cue for derisive approval (villainous gays quickly became a lamentable cliché, coming right on the heels of murderous hippies). The leads are wired for self-detonation (was Rush trying to get them to emulate Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland from "MASH"?). Supporting cast is solid, with Valerie Harper exceptional in small role as Arkin's wife, and some of the comedy works, but much of the rest is decidedly off-putting. ** from ****

From start to finish, F&B is a wide-open romp, send-up, spoof of police movies and, more so, a lampoon of Hollywood's love affair with car crashes. Cars crash all over the place, for no apparent reason. In the middle of San Francisco, a simple collision is followed by a sedan literally flying over the stopped cars, Dukes of Hazzard style. A bobtail flatbed truck, again inexplicably, carrying live chickens through downtown SF tips over spilling chickens all over as a man runs up to the driver and says "You won't believe this but I'm from Allstate."The background dialog is hilarious and requires a lot of rewinding. Radio talk-shows, people in the crowd...they all have punch lines!My only complaint is the only available copy has aggravating, variable volume. Dialog is often too low at normal volume--The scene changes and it is so loud I have to reduce the volume. This, I am told, is "theater sound" designed for live audiences. Whatever it is, I don't like it.In any case, I have always LOVED this movie as it breaks ground by being intentionally campy, but just enough to make it seem MAYBE it is a serious film. In that context, it has a very serious and cohesive plot- -It's just punctuated with ridiculous chases, unparalleled stunt driving (especially the motorcycle scene)and intentionally bad/intermittent Spanish accents by Arkin and Valerie Harper.The paid critics, most of whom panned F&B just don't get it. It's a spoof and a damn good, original one. This movie won't make Hulu's Criterion Collection, that's for certain...if it did, I'd watch.

It's the antidote for The Laughing Policeman, that grim "police procedural" from 1973; it's Freebie and the Bean, a crude, politically incorrect, and very funny buddy movie for the sophomore in all of us.Alan Arkin and James Caan play a couple of San Francisco PD Inspectors on the hunt for . . . oh, who cares? The procedural part of the movie doesn't matter. The fun is in Arkin's neurotic and fastidious Bean (you have to forgive the racial slur right from the start) and Caan decked out in a leisure suit and looking for the next "five-finger discount" (hence, the name "Freebie").It's clearly not a movie for your mom--violent and foul-mouthed, with Arkin accusing his wife of infidelity by demanding to see if she's douched recently, and Caan performing noisy cunnilingus on his girlfriend. It all seems so daring for the 17 year old in 1975, but now, I suspect, I would just cringe and blush at the crudity and concentrate on the hostile chemistry between Arkin and Caan.After so many serious cop-dramas from the early '70s, FATB came across as something of a breath of different air. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a good movie or a nice one, but there is an entertainment value and a vitality that makes it worth watching.And don't miss the cop car through the side of the apartment building!