Okay, here's the deal. I'll always be the first to defend a person's right to read what they want to read, sing what they want to sing, or watch what they want to watch. I heartily agree that what one person feels is art might not meet anyone else's idea of what "art" should be. And I defend anyone's right to make a film about virtually anything. I mean, hey, who am I to decide what a person's taste should or should not be. I still think Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man was a pretty kickin' flick, if that tells you anything about my taste sometimes.
There've been jillions of "taboo" subjects that have been used as movie plots. Midnight Cowboy, for example, dealt with the then-unheard-of world of male prostitution. Won an Oscar® or two for the trouble, thank you. Parker Posey made a splash in The House of Yes, playing one-half of a pair of incestuous twins. The Accused dealt with rape. In the Company of Men dealt with the mistreatment of women by two sleazy men. My Lord, even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was made, and that was one of the more uncomfortable experiences in film-watching I've ever been through. And, yes, let's not forget the ever-popular I Spit On Your Grave, which I'll leave to you folks to decide if you want to see. One word though. Buy a lot of soap, 'cause you'll need to shower a lot after watching that one.
That being said, I wish someone somewhere will calm down when it comes to screaming and carrying on about parodies and satires. Since when is it taboo to touch a genre or a particular movie and make fun of it? Are you kidding me here? Some of the best comedies ever made have been parodies of other more-serious movies. Blazing Saddles mocked every tradition of Westerns. Young Frankenstein did the same for the Universal horror movies of the thirties. Airplane! laid waste to the ridiculously serious disaster movies of the '70s. The Naked Gun series reveled in the cop genre we all grew up with. Top Secret did the same for spy movies, adding a smack or two in the face of those schmaltzy Elvis hulas.
So why, suddenly, is everyone screaming about Mafia!? Because director Jim Abrahams, part of the original Airplane trio, decided to parody The Godfather, he's suddenly some pariah, cast out to the wastelands? That's a load of crap, people, and I'd hope you knew better. If you've got anything to scream about, try screaming about the fact that this movie could've been made so much better than it is, and not because somebody dared to toss water balloons at Coppola's Corleone trilogy.
Mafia tells the story of the Cortino family, led by the legendary Don Vincenzo Cortino (Lloyd Bridges). His son, Anthony (Jay Mohr), is the operator of the Peppermill Hotel and Casino, an operation so successful that folks just send in their money and save the airfare. Anthony is hopelessly in love with Diane (Christina Applegate), who always seems to be wearing perfect suits and straw hats (read: Diane Keaton in The Godfather...) Anthony is being groomed to take over the family business after Don Vincenzo retires to his gardens. What happens in between is pretty straightforward. It's one gag after another, mocking everything reverential about organized crime you've ever seen in movies. And The Godfather is not the only one to take one for the team here. Abrahams also takes his shots at Casino, Il Postino, and numerous other movies.
There are some funny moments in this thing, to be sure. Bridges spoofing the Brando orange-rind smile is a big one. The "kiss of death" scene that every film school loves to show gets a twist that cracked me up. Watching some other gags fall hopelessly flat was sort of painful, 'cause your mind will dream up a hundred better gags they could've used. The white-bread look of the cast is a strange twist in itself, since practically no one even looks Italian, yet the whole idea is based on Italians. Maybe a joke I missed.
But, watching this thing, you're constantly reminded that while The Godfather is a fantastic movie, there are scenes that are sooooo pristine, soooooo perfect, that they just beg for a laughable parody. You know there had to be times in filming that classic that the cast just cracked up laughing, if only to break the tension. It's like that compulsion you have once in a while to yell "BOOOO!" in a library. Drop one note of armpit music in a quiet church one time, and you'll see exactly what I mean. It just needs to be done once in a while, to show that we aren't taking ourselves too seriously.
Sadly though, another pall hangs over this: while you watch Lloyd Bridges acting a fool, it's hard to forget he passed away shortly after this movie was made. It's never easy to watch a movie featuring an actor who's gone, but it's even harder to realize that Bridges had gotten a new lease on a career from the ZAZ team, starting with Airplane! He went from being a serious actor to being a pretty funny sight-gag comedian, and you feel the loss more watching him. I couldn't sit through the last Chris Farley movie for the same reason. It almost hurt too much.
Is there someone to blame for this misstep? Mohr and Applegate are surely not the best casting choices, and honestly, the script is just not up to the level of the usual ZAZ parody. A natural assumption is that all creative forces were being channeled to BASEketball, and that Mafia would heal itself, or, as the usual tragedy goes, it would "fix itself in the editing room." This one needed help from the get-go. The editing room was far too late to try and rewrite the script, juice up the existing gags, and try desperately to fix the ones that were falling like roller derby skaters.
If you're a film fan in the truest sense, you might like Mafia, if only for the game of picking out the movies and scenes being parodied onscreen. If you're looking for a mindless comedy to laugh yourself sick in, there's two out now that do it better than Mafia ever dreamed of.
Image copyright Touchstone Pictures.
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under the knife