JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
The Nevada casino in JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA, the new film by
AIRPLANE!'s writer and director Jim Abrahams, has some unusual gambling
tables. Besides "Candyland" and "Chutes and Ladders," players can try
their hand at "Guess the Number". After all of the bets are placed, the
operator reveals the number he was thinking of, and - surprise - the
players never seem to guess it.
JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA, sometimes marketed more simply as MAFIA!, is a
comedic retelling of the GODFATHER saga. With many of the sets made to
look identical to the movie series it spoofs, the film has jokes that
work best for those familiar with the GODFATHER movies, but the humor is
so broadly written that people who have forgotten the Coppola films will
still get it.
Jay Mohr, in the Al Pacino role, plays Anthony Cortino, and
Christina Applegate, in the Diane Keaton part, is Anthony's new wife,
Diane. Jay's straight man approach to comedy is partially successful,
but Christina brings nothing to her part. Lloyd Bridges, in the Marlon
Brando role, plays the godfather, Don Vincenzo Cortino. In his last
film role before his death, Bridges looks tired and miscast. To be
fair, the gags he is given, like getting stuck in the venetian blinds,
are not much to work with.
The script uses a series of sight gags that work at first, but the
movie, heavy on the flatulence jokes, soon runs out of its own gas.
During the first thirty minutes, the writers, Jim Abrahams, Greg Norberg
and Michael McManus, use one ridiculous gag after another to send the
audience reeling. As the story gets longer, the jokes get staler and
the writers fall back on gross-out humor like the world's biggest
vomiting scene.
Most of the movie, however, is silly fun. When one joke, like
spaghetti on a stick, doesn't work, the writers toss the audience a
barrage of other gags in the hopes that something will strike the
viewers' fancy. (The filmmakers even had fun with the press by sending
out two press kits. The first one had a cover in English, but the text
was in Italian. A few days later, as if to correct the "mistake," the
real English language version arrived.)
Some of the best jokes are funny partly because they are so crude
that you are embarrassed to be laughing. When the young Vincenzo
Cortino (Jason Fuchs) has to hide, they push his whole body up the rear
of an ass. Sounds ridiculous and is, but the director stages it with so
much outlandish panache that the scene generated guffaws from the whole
theater. Others like the one about an obese Italian family who flavors
their food from large pitchers of cholesterol got only small chuckles
from our audience. And still others, as the guy who threw craps at the
dice table by throwing a pair of, well, you guessed it, left our
audience just staring.
Most of the dialog is not up to the physical humor but there are
some funny lines. Pamela Gidley, as an exotic dancer named Pepper, does
a high energy take off of the dance routine from FLASHDANCE. "I wanted
to be a research chemist," she tells Anthony. "But my legs were too
long."
The godfather laments the passing of the mob's golden age. "We
used to just kill and dismember people," he sighs. "Now it's all drugs.
Where is the honor in that?"
Even if you hate the movie, stay through all of the crazy credits,
where you get "fun facts" and a horoscope interspersed with the more
traditional credits. Even the creator of the baby salad greens gets
mentioned.
JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA runs just 1:33. It is rated PG-13 for crude
jokes and comic violence and would be fine for kids around 11 and up.
Have I seen this movie: Yes
And what did I think: Mafia! is a hilarious spoof of the Godfather movies in the tradition of the Airplane movies. It's just plain silly of course, so don't look for anything plausible here. There are lots of great one-liners here, and although a lot of the jokes are rehashed, they're still fun. The one thing that I didn't like was the end, it was just kind of stupid and didn't need to be there. There are no standout performance here, but then of course its not an oscar type of movie. It's a shame this was Lloyd Bridges' last movie though, he didn't have that great of a role here. His last role should have been a little bit better, but he did have fun at the end of his career by playing comedic characters such as this, and in Hot Shots! Well, if you want to have a good laugh then Mafia! shouldn't disappoint. It's definately worth renting or even buying.
I give Mafia! 3.5 out of 5 stars
Review written August 3, 1999
