Where to watch Mafia!
2 Stars
Young Vincenzo Cortino, son of a Sicilian postman, delivers a package for his father and accidentally sees something he should not see. In a donkey’s, well, he is smuggled out of town, where he tries to reach a ship headed for America. There, Vincenzo works his way up to the top of the Mafia. One day, his youngest son makes a mistake and has to leave town. A little later, he ends up as a casino boss in Las Vegas. But the heads of the other families want old Don Cortino out of the way. So, they shoot him 47 times and send a *very* attractive woman to distract his son from his casino work. Will he fall for her or will he return to Diane, who, by the way, had run for President successfully in the meantime?
I was roaming around the Peppermill Casino in the winter of 1997 when I stumbled upon the production crew filming a pivotal scene for the gangster film comedy, Mafia! So, when the movie came out in theaters the following summer, I had to check it out. During my initial viewing, I was disappointed in the film; my first impression was that Mafia! was better than Basketball (the summer of 1998’s low point), but not as funny as There’s Something About Mary (the summer of 1998’s high point). The zany laugh-a-minute pace of the ZAZ classics is present here, and while I appreciate the effort on-screen, there are dozens of visual and verbal jokes launched at the audience throughout the film’s 86-minute runtime; only a handful land.
The Godfather, Casino, and Goodfellas are Mafia!’s largest targets, and the film’s script thoroughly exploits the genres’ conceivable angles. I suspect that if Mafia! was ten years earlier on screens, it would have been more successful at the box office. Jay Mohr, one of the world’s best comedians, is adequate in the Al Pacino role, and Lloyd Bridges is as daffy as ever, but Billy Burke is most amusing as the hothead. Mafia! is an uneven comedy from one of the genre’s masters.
Directed by: Jim Abrahams
Written by: Jim Abrahams, Greg Norberg, Michael McManus
Starring: Jay Mohr, Christina Applegate, Lloyd Bridges