This film shows us two people in an estate agents office while a narration talks about how tough Mondays at work can be etc. Suddenly two robbers burst into the office and rob it.
The plot is simple here and the reason the film is quite short is because it is all about one thing – the twist in the end, nothing else is here. The film plays out with the assumption that the narrator is the guy in the office, however the twist is that he isn't, instead he is one of the two robbers who is narrating his feelings about his work. Said out loud like this it sounds quite clever and I can imagine that Allen thought he was onto something when he came up with it; problem here is that the actual film doesn't go further than this very simple idea. The script focuses on nothing beyond this twist either – it contains refers to the female colleague so that we will assume they are the people in shot and therefore go "oh" whenever we see the other robber is female, and most of the script are little things like these. We don't get much in the way of intelligence and wit from the script – it is all this twist and it isn't good enough on its own.
Technically this isn't up to the standard of Allen's other shorts. The use of CCTV pov is obvious and the majority of the shots are ordinary and do little to catch the eye. It isn't that it is "bad", it is just that normally the main thing going for his films is that they are pretty solid in terms of visual delivery and construct – this one isn't.
Mondays has a good idea at its core but unfortunately it has been made as a film with only this one good idea to offer and it needed more in the way of script and delivery to make it more than just a short film with a small twist at the end. This is what it is at the end of the day – a twist with no heart or bite because there is nothing else to the film apart from it. Shame.
The plot is simple here and the reason the film is quite short is because it is all about one thing – the twist in the end, nothing else is here. The film plays out with the assumption that the narrator is the guy in the office, however the twist is that he isn't, instead he is one of the two robbers who is narrating his feelings about his work. Said out loud like this it sounds quite clever and I can imagine that Allen thought he was onto something when he came up with it; problem here is that the actual film doesn't go further than this very simple idea. The script focuses on nothing beyond this twist either – it contains refers to the female colleague so that we will assume they are the people in shot and therefore go "oh" whenever we see the other robber is female, and most of the script are little things like these. We don't get much in the way of intelligence and wit from the script – it is all this twist and it isn't good enough on its own.
Technically this isn't up to the standard of Allen's other shorts. The use of CCTV pov is obvious and the majority of the shots are ordinary and do little to catch the eye. It isn't that it is "bad", it is just that normally the main thing going for his films is that they are pretty solid in terms of visual delivery and construct – this one isn't.
Mondays has a good idea at its core but unfortunately it has been made as a film with only this one good idea to offer and it needed more in the way of script and delivery to make it more than just a short film with a small twist at the end. This is what it is at the end of the day – a twist with no heart or bite because there is nothing else to the film apart from it. Shame.