Beginning a review with a pasta metaphor about a movie set in Italy is a bit reductive and uninspired, but then again, so is Mafia Mamma. Rigatoni alla zozzona mingles four distinctive dishes — amatriciana, cacio e pepe, carbonara, and gricia — into a single recipe, fully earning its name, roughly translated as “a big mess.” But while that pasta sounds simultaneously like a lot and something you’d still want more of, Mafia Mamma’s combo of fish-out-of-water comedy, swoony romance, over-the-top action, and violent mob film is merely far too much and never good enough.
None of the criticism about Mafia Mamma should stick to Toni Collette, who deserves to be the star of a movie where she gets to wear glamorous clothes, make out with a hot young Italian dude, and shoot on location in Rome. It’s great for her but bad for an audience that only gets some briefly charming and amusing bits over the course of a 100-minute film that’s not a slog, but is full of tonal whiplash and what-the-hell-am-I-watching moments. My barely legible notes devolved into “HOW IS THIS A MOVIE?!?” at some point late in its runtime. And indeed, this Catherine Hardwicke picture often feels like a cinematic mob front more than an actual film.
In the opening scene, a Nino Rota-knockoff score plays as the camera pans over dead bodies on an Italian street, with blood mingling with crushed tomatoes on the ground. Is it meant to be funny? Who knows? (Not Mafia Mamma.) Cut to a crying Kristin (Collette), but we soon learn that she isn’t upset over the deaths we saw a minute ago; it’s that her son (Tommy Rodger) is going off to college. She soon learns that her dirtbag husband (Tim Daish) is having an affair, but she treats his mistress with far more generosity than she probably deserves, because we’re meant to see that she always puts herself last. Her job in pharmaceutical marketing is both unfilling and demeaning, thanks to her dickish male colleagues. She only seems to have this career so that the film can slot in a clumsy product placement for Restylane, even including the name of the parent company, Galderma, in a clear tell. (Now I am complicit too.)
When Kristin gets the news that the grandfather she never knew has died in Italy and she is needed as his heir, she takes it as an opportunity for her Eat Pray Love vacation to rediscover herself — and eat all the gnocchi and gelato. When she lands in a Rome populated by stereotypes, she meets a sexy Italian guy (Giulio Corso), falling into his arms while “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” blares. After committing faux pas after faux pas at the funeral, she soon learns from his right hand, black-clad Bianca (Monica Bellucci), that she has been named her grandfather’s successor in his business. However, he isn’t really a winemaker as she is initially told; he was the don of the Balbano crime family. Kristin must now lead them against the rival Romanos, even though she insists that she’s a good person who knows nothing of the mob and hasn’t even seen The Godfather.

Mafia Mamma expects that we’ve at least watched the Francis Ford Coppola classic and know enough to catch its obvious references (like oranges signifying impending death). This isn’t a subtle film that trusts its audience to get sly nods to its antecedents, whether they’re ‘70s crime classics or 21st century movies about women finding themselves in Italy. Instead, they’re hammered in over and over with blunt force, just like Mafia Mamma’s scene where a man is murdered with a stiletto heel used more like its namesake weapon than footwear.
The first scene probably should’ve clued me in to the violence to come in Mafia Mamma, but I still wasn’t expecting multiple close-ups of a heel gouging out an assassin’s eyeballs and a hand being severed and served on a platter. (Judging by the groans and gasps in the theater, I wasn’t the only one.) Hardwicke has made a surprisingly gory movie, whose brutality feels at odds with its comedy and romance. Balancing these elements is difficult (Grosse Pointe Blank being a rare successful example), but Mafia Mamma’s issue isn’t that it leans too heavily on one genre at the expense of the others; it simply doesn’t do justice to any of them. Its romance is uninspiring (partially due to the terrible performance of Corso as Kristin’s love interest), it’s only fitfully funny, and its action doesn’t thrill. It whipsaws between tones and genres with little grace.
Collette and Bellucci do what they can with the script from J. Michael Feldman and Debbie Jhoon, but the jokes rarely land, and Kristin never feels like a real person. The movie intends for her to seem selfless, but she’s really just oblivious to how others feel in the way that well-off white ladies often are. Collette has earned decades worth of goodwill for playing a variety of characters, but as written, Kristin grates on the nerves. Even as she evolves from a doormat American wife and mom to a capable head of a crime family, she never gets less annoying or more compelling.
Mafia Mamma is big and brash, which should get it some points for really going for it. However, it is poorly executed from every angle, with shots lingering too long, inconsistent subtitling, and unconvincing performances in supporting roles. Hardwicke has been hit-and-miss throughout her career, but Mafia Mamma doesn’t feel like it was made by someone with her decades of experience. There are clues that it wasn’t made for a ton of money, but that doesn’t explain or excuse what a mess it is. Mafia Mamma is never fun enough to be good or bad enough to be fun.
D+
“Mafia Mamma” is in theaters Friday.