Gangster Comedies Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Mickey Blue Eyes and Other Funny Gangsters

Mickey Blues Eyes? Wasn’t that last week, when you were getting my latest gripes about movie-quette? Yes, I confess, the usually ground-breaking Rovin’ and Ravin’ is running a week behind. Reviewing just one film a week, I have to choose which dark corner of the megaplex I’m going to rove to and which new piece of celluloid I’m going to rave about. This week, although several new films are opening, none of them sound particularly rewarding, so I’m going to pick up one we missed.

This has been Hugh Grant’s summer, beginning with Notting Hill, and finishing with this latest gangster comedy, a genre that to me is getting as tiresome as Grant’s hair. I passed up Analyze This earlier this year, since I felt that there was no need for another gangster-in-therapy (talk about your narrow genres) comedy after Grosse Pointe Blank the year before. Coincidentally, Analyze This appeared as a video last week, so the two films together make me an offer I can’t refuse.

I wish I could say that the thirty-nine year old Grant has come a long way from Four Weddings and a Funeral, which, five years ago, marked his first commercial success and recognition, although certainly not his first film. But, our tousled haired lad, a Peter Pan redux, won’t grow up or get a haircut either. This time he is the boyishly British manager of a Manhattan auction house who is in love with a teacher (Jeanne Tripplehorn) whose father is a Mafia chief (James Caan).

Can you guess? The charming Englishman finds that he is not marrying just a charming American woman but her whole family as well, complete with its conflicts with other gangsters, not to mention with the FBI. Grant does his best to keep himself well-liked by everyone, even, as a sort of inverse male Eliza Doolittle, trying to learn to speak like a Noo-Yawkuh.

I felt I got more for my money by renting Analyze This, starring another actor who just never comes across as cute as he seems to think he is, Billy Crystal, playing the outsider, in this case, psychotherapist Ben Sobel, who comes in contact with the mob. What sets this movie above Mickey Blue Eyes is that Crystal’s mobster-client Paul Vitti is played by Robert DeNiro, who contributes not only his strong presence but his often overlooked comedic skills, as he plays a hard-working man dealing with job stress. Of course, his stress involves some hard choices--kill this guy, bribe that one?

Perhaps he was overwhelmed by DeNiro, but Crystal’s therapist seems to have been self-medicating. Perhaps his restraint here makes this film better than some of his recent regrettables, such as My Giant and Father’s Day. For whatever reason, the therapy sessions with DeNiro and Crystal are witty, even sophisticated. It’s too bad that the film gets so graphically violent that the humor is lost.

That is my problem with gangster comedies. I can see why the mob is appealing to filmmakers, with its strange combination of traditional family values and lawlessness, its colorful language, and its sheer but often banal evil. But that evil, the violence, the corruption just don’t seem the stuff of comedy.

Two gangster comedies available on video that have brought me some pleasure and some laughs are Grosse Pointe Blank (punning on its setting Grosse Pointe and the dark classic Point Blank) and The Freshman. Grosse Pointe Blank is another gangster-in-therapy comedy.

Both of these are stranger, stronger films than the more recent offerings. John Cusack is a killer for hire who ends up in love and in therapy. Like the other two films, Grosse Pointe Blank emphasizes that the conflicts between rival criminals (in this case Cusack’s Martin and Dan Aykroyd’s Grocer) are more important in daily criminal life than conflicts with law enforcement. Thanks to Cusack (just about the only saving grace in Pushing Tin) with his cool understatement, the film takes on the post-modern weirdness of Fargo.

The Freshman also sparkles with a memorable performance, Marlon Brando’s. This time, he does not once again play a gangster. Instead, he plays Marlon Brando playing a gangster. In fact, there are two performances that make this droll movie about a movie worth watching. Matthew Broderick holds his own with or against the legendary Brando. The lizard could give Godzilla lessons in how to steal a scene without destroying a city. And that’s a good thing.

Keep your feet dry—no telling what is on the floor—and your heart full of noble thoughts, even though these films are full of other than noble characters.