None of the criticism about Mafia Mamma<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s not a slog, but is full of tonal whiplash and what-the-hell-am-I-watching moments. My barely legible notes devolved into \u201cHOW IS THIS A MOVIE?!?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em>.) Cut to a crying Kristin (Collette), but we soon learn that she isn\u2019t upset over the deaths we saw a minute ago; it\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> vacation to rediscover herself \u2014 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 \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Miss a Thing\u201d 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\u2019s successor in his business. However, he isn\u2019t 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\u2019s a good person who knows nothing of the mob and hasn\u2019t even seen The Godfather<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first scene probably should\u2019ve clued me in to the violence to come in Mafia Mamma<\/em>, but I still wasn\u2019t expecting multiple close-ups of a heel gouging out an assassin\u2019s eyeballs and a hand being severed and served on a platter. (Judging by the groans and gasps in the theater, I wasn\u2019t 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 <\/em>being a rare successful example), but Mafia Mamma<\/em>\u2019s issue isn\u2019t that it leans too heavily on one genre at the expense of the others; it simply doesn\u2019t do justice to any of them. Its romance is uninspiring (partially due to the terrible performance of Corso as Kristin\u2019s love interest), it\u2019s only fitfully funny, and its action doesn\u2019t thrill. It whipsaws between tones and genres with little grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mafia Mamma<\/em> 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 <\/em>doesn\u2019t feel like it was made by someone with her decades of experience. There are clues that it wasn\u2019t made for a ton of money, but that doesn\u2019t explain or excuse what a mess it is. Mafia Mamma<\/em> is never fun enough to be good or bad enough to be fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mafia Mamma” is in theaters Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/mafia-mamma2-scaled-1024x681.jpg\")
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Mafia Mamma <\/em>expects that we\u2019ve<\/em> at least watched the Francis Ford Coppola classic and know enough to catch its obvious references (like oranges signifying impending death). This isn\u2019t a subtle film that trusts its audience to get sly nods to its antecedents, whether they\u2019re \u201870s crime classics or 21st century movies about women finding themselves in Italy. Instead, they\u2019re hammered in over and over with blunt force, just like Mafia Mamma<\/em>\u2019s scene where a man is murdered with a stiletto heel used more like its namesake weapon than footwear. <\/p>\n\n\n\nD+<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n