There's a running joke in Mafia Mamma about main character Kristin Balbano (Toni Collette) never having seen the Godfather movies, but Kristin reacts so inexplicably to the danger she finds herself in that it seems possible she's never even heard of organized crime. That's just one of the baffling elements of this abysmal mob comedy, which finds the suburban American mom unexpectedly tasked with taking over an Italian crime family.
For Kristin, attending the funeral of the Italian grandfather she never knew provides the perfect pretext for a journey of self-discovery, her own version of Under the Tuscan Sun or Eat, Pray, Love. She's just discovered that her deadbeat husband Paul (Tim Daish) has been cheating on her, she's sent her son Domenick (Tommy Rodger) off to college, and she's sick of being undermined and insulted at her pharmaceutical marketing job. When she arrives in Italy, she almost immediately bumps into handsome pasta-maker Lorenzo (Giulio Corso), who seems ideal for a rejuvenating fling.
Even after her grandfather's funeral is interrupted by gunfire, Kristin remains fixated on sightseeing and romance, and her level of naïveté is hard to believe from a functioning adult. Thanks to a prerecorded video from her late grandfather, Kristin learns that she's stumbled into a bit of a King Ralph situation. As the only direct heir to the Balbano criminal empire, her grandfather's final wish was that she take over the family business, aided by his top lieutenant, Bianca (Monica Bellucci).
That doesn't sit well with Kristin's hotheaded second cousin Fabrizio (Eduardo Scarpetta), who believes he should be in charge, but Kristin blithely takes over, inadvertently thwarting multiple attempts on her life while still pursuing Lorenzo. Director Catherine Hardwicke awkwardly mixes some surprisingly intense violence with Kristin's Mr. Bean-like ability to emerge from any dangerous situation unscathed, but both the action and the slapstick are clumsily staged. The tone lurches from serious to silly, and the ungainly pacing jumps ahead months at a time, creating distracting narrative gaps.
It makes sense that screenwriters J. Michael Feldman and Debbie Jhoon come from a sitcom background, since Mafia Mamma often feels like an entire season of a third-rate sitcom crammed into a feature film. The supporting characters are broad and cartoonish, mostly just a collection of crass Italian stereotypes. Kristin is just as ridiculous, and it's impossible to care about her personal development when she's so obnoxiously oblivious. Collette's natural charisma sometimes shines through, but she's ill-suited to the belabored wackiness of the writing, and she struggles to find an emotional core in what's meant to be a story of self-empowerment. She has no chemistry with either Bellucci or Corso, making it hard to care how those relationships will progress.
Hardwicke's varied career includes both small-scale dramas and studio blockbusters like Twilight and Red Riding Hood, but she fails at both modes here. The character interactions are largely meaningless, and the crime story is sloppy and nonsensical. There's no central villain, and Kristin's approach to running the Balbano organization changes from scene to scene. The movie shies away from making her seem amoral or ruthless, emphasizing her compassion and innovation, but then glosses over all of the brutal, deadly enterprises the family still participates in.
A darker comedy would have examined the tension between Kristin's positive self-image and the nasty business she's inherited, but Mafia Mamma has no interest in moral complexity or social satire. Kristin might as well have taken over any kind of old-fashioned family company for which she's ill-suited, and the feeble jokes would have generally been the same. Mafia Mamma begins with a tired premise and only gets more tiresome from there. ♦
MAFIA MAMMA
