Fun with Dick and Jane

A 1977 film, Dick and Jane are two married yuppies, an aerospace engineer and a dedicated homemaker. Dick makes a handsome salary, and both of them spend it as fast as possible (one of Dick's lunches costs a thousand dollars). Dick knows all his colleagues are engaged in bribery, but he's honest enough not to break the law himself. Both Dick and Jane are quite happy.

Dick and Jane are idiots, and they're spending far above even their extensive means. They've borrowed against the house and their insurance, taken all the money out of their bank account, and still have more they wish to buy. But aerospace engineering is in a decline, and Dick is about to be fired. Off to the food stamp line with them!

Until Jane sees a loan office robbed, and realizes just how easy crime can be....

Was remade in 2005 with Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni in the title roles

In this version, set in 2000 at the height of web-based businesses, Dick is an employee of one such called Globodyne while his wife works at a travel agency. They live moderately well with their son and a Hispanic housemaid. One day Dick gets promoted to head of VP communications of the company. He tells Jane about along with making the suggestion to quit her job with their supposed increase of money. However the next day as Dick does a interview on a stock based TV show, he realizes hes been made the scapegoat for the financial failings of the company which he of course didn't know about. Globodyne goes under in less then a day and the employees laid off including Dick. What's more Jane took his advice and quit meaning both are now jobless. With the recession of companies going under, Dick can't get another job similar to his old one and Jane and he are forced into trying minimum wage work.

After one misadventure after another and having to either trade or give away most of their luxuries. Dick, fed up, "steals" back their lawn (as before he was laid off was getting new grass for his house), giving him a small victory in his struggle. But it doesn't last as he soon gets an eviction notice. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Dick set out to gain money, illegally. After inadvertently getting Jane caught up in the theft, the two realize they like the rush and thus their crime spree begins.

Was met with mixed reviews but did moderately well at the box office.

This film provides examples of:

 * Anti Hero: Type IV in the 2005 version.
 * Black and Grey Morality: If somebody in the first movie didn't commit a misdeed, it was because they were only in one scene.
 * Conspicuous Consumption: Very, very much true, particularly of Jane.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: The remake in particular, but still present in the original.
 * Disaster Dominoes: Jane is briefly hired as a model. When she trips and crashes into a cart covered with snacks, it causes a mild but lengthy version of this that ends by setting two tables on fire as Jane screams and runs out of the room.
 * Finagles Law: Always, always applies for at least one character in any given scene. "Exceptions" come from one person's failure being another person's gain.
 * Genius Ditz: When Dick first evaluates Jane's work possibilities, she interprets his remarks as meaning she could only be a secretary or a whore, to which he responds "You're not qualified to be a secretary." Yet she shows a surprising amount of intelligence when committing robberies. (Dick arguably falls into this trope too, though he could at least consistently perform his job before he was fired.)
 * I Meant to Do That: A variant. Dick and Jane try to hide how poor they are, but even their lawn plants are rented, and the company that rented them out comes to claim them after the check bounces. Jane sees the neighbor watching, so she starts ordering them to remove the plants, claiming they put in the wrong ones and she wants them gone and her money back.
 * Involuntary Charity Donation: At the end of the remake,
 * It Works Better With Bullets: Dick's third failed robbery.
 * Just Like Robin Hood: Remake only.
 * Kick the Dog: In the remake, a bank head pretends to call Dick in for a job interview, even letting him to bypass a long line of people queueing up for it. It turns out that he's just there so that the guy and the other higher-ups in the bank can mock him and take more pictures of him for the 'net. Turns into a The Dog Bites Back moment when Dick and Jane rob the guy, getting him fired in the process.
 * Humiliation Conga: In the remake, after Dick's company collapses.
 * Money Fetish: Jane in particular has an interesting reaction to stealing $200,000 cash.
 * Money to Throw Away: After robbing the aforementioned televangelist, Dick and Jane find they can't ditch the cops following them, so they throw part of the money out the window. Every other car behind them, including the cop cars, stops and blocks the road as the drivers make a grab for the money.
 * No Ontological Inertia: Everything tanks when Globodyne goes down in the remake.
 * Outlaw Couple: The two sum up to this, though neither fulfills a "brawn" role.
 * Pants Positive Safety: "If that thing goes off, you'll be going on this robbery half-cocked." It's practically impossible to draw the gun from such a space, though, and Dick's failure leads the fellow at the cash register to think he's trying to buy condoms.
 * Present Day Past: The remake is set in 2000, but a convenience store's door sticker has a "born before" date of 1983.
 * Police Are Useless: The remake has a Latino man being mistaken for Dick via a picture ID by the INS.
 * Promoted to Scapegoat: Remake only.
 * Percision F Strike: Jane calls Jack Mc Callister a FUCKER for stealing all their money in the remake.
 * Sarcastic Confession: When Dick is asked where he's getting all his money.
 * Swiss Bank Account: The local bad guy has stashed all his plundered money in an offshore bank account (it's never mentioned what country it belongs to).
 * This Is Going to Be Huge: According to the remake, Enron.
 * Xanatos Gambit: