Mafia Mamma

Has any modern director fared worse after great studio success than Catherine Hardwicke? After crafting intricate grungy dramas like Thirteen and The Lords of Dogtown she launched the fantastically successful Twilight film series only to be exiled from her own creation even as it grew and grew.  Since then she has chased similar heights in both fantasy horror (the magnificently bizarre Red Riding Hood) and character drama but has mostly fallen short from the successes of her early career.  Muddled and unfunny, Mafia Mamma may be the nadir of her post-Twilight work.

There are fish out of water stories and there are fish into a gun fight stories and Kristin (Colette) is definitely living the latter. A cozy New York ad executive, Kristin returns to Italy for the first time since she was baby to attend her grandfather’s funeral only to discover he was not only a long-time mafia chieftain, but that he has left control of the family business to Kristin.  With her professional and family life deteriorating in America, and the possibility of romance with a friendly local, she ignores all her common sense and sets about making peace with the other warring families.  With a burgeoning new career and a new boyfriend it looks like Kristin may have finally found her purpose in life, at least until a rival families hitman shows up looking for her along with her ne’er-do-well husband and the police and suddenly she’s discovering why the mafia doesn’t have a retirement plan …

The fact that there have been so many ‘odd man sucked into the mafia’ films suggests there is a fair amount of juice in the idea.  Analyze This, Mickey Blue Eyes – it was on the verge of becoming a sub-genre on its own back in the early 2000s.  Which is, not coincidentally, the era it feels like Mafia Mamma has escaped from.  Old jokes, old set ups, old punch lines – there doesn’t seem like much in it that hasn’t been tested and re-tested through many of the mediocre comedies that preceeded it.  From Kristin’s early success leading the family to a disastrous date with an assassin or the return of her worthless ex, there is nothing in Mafia Mamma that feels the least bit surprising.  And comedy without surprise is not comedy, it is nothing.

Collette does her best to elevate things, or at least to cover up the cracks with sheer manic energy but there is a lot to cover up.  Only when Kristin and consigliere Bianca (Bellucci) open up about the difficulties of trying to succeed in a man’s world does Mafia Mamma seem to cultivate its own identity or come up with something to say.  But those moments are few and fleeting, making way for more gags about Kristin’s attempt to balance her double life or explain to her teenage son that she’s become a mafia Don.  For as much as she may push against the old way of doing things, Mafia Mamma is ensnared by them.

As interesting as it is to see Hardwicke trying comedy out, nothing and no one is getting elevated here.  None of the keen eye for character from her early work or even the strength of casting and zeal for lunacy of her studio work comes through.  Maybe if it had come out a few decades ago it would have been just another mafia comedy at least.  Now it’s not even that.

4/10. Starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci, Tim Daish and Giuseppe Zeno. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke.

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