Quick Change (1991)

To veteran study-hall stars everywhere, Bill Murray is the fulfillment of a buried wish: to remain a high school jokester into middle age — and to get away with it. With his permanent cocked eyebrow and sarcastic delivery, Murray has become a comic everydude. In Quick Change, a fairly tame caper comedy, Murray proves his savvy at finding ideal roles and — in this case especially, as codirecter and coproducer — getting the most mileage out of them. With the perky Geena Davis and Randy Quaid, who's once again reduced to a lame and bumbling prop, Murray masterminds the perfect heist. After that, of course, it's one mishap after another — the kind of mess that even an eminently sensible chief of police like Jason Robards can't untangle.

There's little that's original or terrifically funny. The best swipes are perhaps redundant, aimed at a New York City peopled by every sort of reprehensible personality and prone to tearing down landmarks to put up luxury condos with names like Nouvelle Versailles. But the film's blessedly fast pacing glides over the near-laughs. Murray keeps the action focused on the characters, which makes for a comedy suitably scaled for TV. This is the kind of downsized entertainment that needs only the right junk food to complete the ingredients for one fine evening in front of the tube. B-

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