Jamie
Mamma Mia! That’s not this. It’s Mafia Mamma! Mamma Mia! Enough of that. This might turn out to be the year of the comedy comeback. Or maybe more accurately the year of the BMT comedy comeback. It seems like we had minor comedies out the wazoo being released to >2000 theaters. We just did About my Father. We have a couple other (potential) entries later this year. Where were the bad horror films? Where were the star-studded comedy flops? Everything seems so quaint and filled with fresh faces ready to be fallen on or old faces… uh… also ready to be fallen on. It’s going to make for a wild ride down the home stretch. Mamma Mia indeed.
To recap, everything is going wrong in Kristin’s life. She just sent her only child off to college and has simultaneously found out her loser husband has been cheating on her. So a call from Italy requesting her attendance at the funeral of her grandfather couldn’t come at a better time. Under the guise of a work trip she heads off with a express mission to eat, pray, fuck. She immediately runs into the man of her dreams, but is distracted when she finds herself under fire at the funeral. It’s soon revealed that her grandfather was a mafia don and she just inherited the family. Gulp. Members of the family are concerned and try to just get her to agree to a truce. The rival family, though, aims to kill her and ultimately through luck Kristin ends up killing the head of that family instead. Double gulp! She starts seeing the man she met, Lorenzo, as she tries to turn the business legit. The other family won’t quit, though, and soon she has killed another assassin and ended up getting fired from her job. With that she throws herself fully into the family business and soon has it humming with a mix of legal business and illegal (but moral) business. Soon her husband and son show up being like “WTF, mate? Put some more shrimp on the barbie,” and she decides to retire and return home. In the process of retiring, the police bust in to arrest everyone. Turns out Lorenzo was an undercover officer! Oh no! She goes to trial, but is found innocent and survives one last assassination attempt. With the confidence of her family she takes over as don to (presumably) continue to turn it into a legal enterprise. THE END.
One of my favorite podcasts reviewed this film and (mostly) liked it. There appeared to be a bit of celebration that a traditional rom com came out into theaters. I agree in that sense. We have a really charming and good actress in Toni Collette helming a goofy romantic film. That’s good. The film? Not that good. She’s great, but several of the supporting actors are pretty irritating (particularly Fabrizio). It’s also unusually gruesome (which some could see as a positive, but I didn’t understand the point of), actively offensive against Italians, and interminably long. The point is that I liked About my Father quite a bit more.
Hot Take Clam Bake! I was feeling the sparks between Toni Colette and numerous characters in the film… just not the ones she was paired with. Monica Bellucci and her were rolling all up in some beds together. But that would be counterintuitively a cold take, because their chemistry was so apparent it would be played out to pair them up. No, I’m thinking her and her bodyguard Aldo are gonna get it on. She’s helped him out with his mother’s hard to find medicine and soon he’s guarding more than just her body. Or… wait… he’s doing more than just guarding her body… whatever. Hot Take Temperature: Tuscan Sun.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about taking an Italian vacation and calling it a movie? But like … forgetting to write jokes and stuff? Let’s go!
Absolute peak “none of this is funny but everyone seems to be having fun which is itself maybe okay” film.
Because Toni Collette seems like she is having a blast here with Catherine Hardwicke.
Oh yeah, robot leg. Add this to the Robot Leg / Arm series along with I Know Who Killed me because Monica Bellucci definitely had a full on robot leg. They try to be like “This? This ain’t a regular human leg … uh, it is just like the most fancy prosthetic you’ve ever seen. Yeah, that’s it!” Which definitely means it is a robot leg.
The film is obviously quite scattershot. Isn’t that how bad comedies operate these days. A bunch of random encounters and situations, a bunch of improv, and then hope enough of it comes out in the wash to form a movie.
But did it form a movie? Like … did it?
The storyline is just Suburban Mamma goes to Italy and becomes Mafia Mamma, survives a few assassination attempts, survives going on trial in Italy (famous for their incredibly not-corrupt trial system …), and then makes a pharmaceutical / mafia empire the end.
The only thing that kind of worked for me was the constant references to The Godfather and how perplexed everyone is that our Mafia Mamma has never seen it (she just can’t carve out three hours, c’mon! I can relate).
I’ll leave it there. Kind of fun film that is almost entirely worthless. Even if it was good it would be mostly worthless.
I’m going to make up a new category of Disgruntled Number Two (Who?) for this film because I feel like they needed that trope for this film to function. Wait a second, Restylane, the pharmaceutical they specifically run an ad for is real and is Product Placement (What?) … huh. Obviously Setting as a Character (Where?) for Italy. And why not, a Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that our Mafia Mamma is good at her job. This movie is probably closest to Good although I personally didn’t like it much.
Oh god do I actually have to make a sequel to this film? Fine. Read about it in the quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
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