Mafia Mamma

Posted on April 13, 2023 at 5:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for bloody violence, sexual content and language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, references to drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Crime-related peril and violence including shoot-outs, murders, poison
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 14, 2023

“Mafia Mamma” is a high concept elevator pitch that might have sustained a seven-minute comedy sketch but does not work as a feature-length movie. It’s a classic fish out of water: American suburban mom inherits an Italian mafia operation in the middle of a turf war. It could have worked. I kept thinking of the ever-delightful “Married to the Mob.” But it relies too heavily on the set-up to carry the movie, with thinly conceived characters. The plot twists are predictable and boring, the funny parts are not that funny, and the gory parts are, well, also not that funny, and not very
exciting.

Toni Collette plays Kristin. She works in marketing at a pharmaceutical company. The men in her group do not appreciate her. Neither does her immature and dependent husband, Paul (Tim Daish). Their son is leaving for college (Tommy Rodger as Dominick). When she discovers her husband is cheating on her just as she learns that her grandfather in Italy has died, she decides to go to the funeral, even though she had not been in contact with him since she and her mother left Italy when she was a toddler. The character has exactly one attribute: always doing for others and putting herself last. With the encouragement of her best friend, Jenny (Sophia Nomvete), she decides to turn the trip to Italy into a chance to enjoy herself, or, as she puts it with the absence of any charm or wit that makes this movie such a trudge, “my own ‘Under the Tuscan Sun,’ eat, pray, f***.”

At the airport in Rome, she literally bumps into handsome Lorenzo (Giulio Corso) and, encouraged by his aunt (Dora Romano) gives him her number. Then she is whisked off to the funeral of the grandfather she does not remember, which turns into a massive shoot-out. Grandpa was a mob boss, and in a video he left for Kristin he explains that after her father was killed he sent her and her mother to America and had no contact with them to keep them safe. Since only a family member can take over for him, he has essentially left the entire operation to Kristin. Bianca, her grandfather’s closest associate (Monica Bellucci) persuades her to take a meeting with the rival mob, promising that if she does that, Bianca will let her see Lorenzo so she can have sex for the first time in three years.

Kristin stumbles successfully through various encounters with the rival bad guys and with some threats inside her own bunch of bad guys, with some very grisly but intended to be humorous murders, including poison and death by stiletto. Also intended to be humorous is the contrast between her various nice suburban lady persona and the ruthless murderers and drug dealers she is surrounded with. “I made muffins!” she announces cheerily, and then feels called upon to explain that she had to use the bananas before they went bad. Collette and Belucci are great as always, but their underwritten roles, and the script’s unsurprising surprises and lurches from set-up to set-up, and tone to tone keep getting in the way instead of moving it forward. By the time it gets to a big courtroom climax, the trial somehow conducted in English with an American lawyer, and somehow being about how nice Kristin is instead of the bloodbath she was involved in. The result, not just of the trial but of the movie itself, just feels lazy.

Parents should know that this has a lot of graphic violence for a comedy, with shoot-outs and grisly murders, chopping off the hand of a corpse to send a message, poison, gouging out someone’s eyes, etc. Characters commit many crimes including drug dealing. Characters drink and smoke and use strong language and there are sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: What qualities did Kristin have that made her a good boss? Has anyone in your family ever inherited anything unusual?

If you like this, try: “Married to the Mob” and “The Ladykillers” (1955 version)

Air

Posted on April 5, 2023 at 5:45 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 7, 2023

A good movie will capture our attention even when we know, because it is a true story, how it turned out. How it happened can be an engrossing story itself, especially if it was a shift with consequences so pervasive we can hardly remember when things were different. Today, dozens of celebrities, even the biggest box-office actors and platinum-selling singers, make more money from their lines of cosmetics, fragrances, clothing and shoes, housewares, books, phone plans, liquor, and perhaps, someday, steel-belted radial tires and vacation time shares. But it began when a man named Sonny Vacarro, working for Nike, made a deal with an athlete who had not yet played his first professional basketball game. His name is Michael Jordan.

Matt Damon plays Sonny, with director Ben Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight. As the movie begins, In 1984, Nike was known as a running shoe company. Converse and Adidas had most of the market for basketball shoes. Nike, with only 17 percent, was considering giving up entirely. Vacarro, whose life could easily fill a few more movies, wants to change the division’s approach, a poor (in both senses of the word) imitation of the vastly more successful competition. They would pay the top athletes a set fee to appear on posters and ads, representing the brand. Sonny and his colleagues discussed the lower-tier athletes they might be able to afford but no one thought that pursuing the same failed strategy would produce a better result. They just did not know what else to try, and the old system might not work, but it was safe.

Nike was an upstart company, and, as Sonny reminded Phil Knight, before they were a public company, with all of the bureaucracy and high profile disclosures that requires, they were the opposite of safe. The film cleverly uses the company’s real-life principles as commentary or chapter headings. “Our business is change” is number one.

Sonny decides that instead of hedging their bets by picking three basketball players and hoping one of them would excel, they should spend their entire budget on Michael Jordan a #3 draft pick rookie who has not yet set foot on a professional court. He has to persuade his colleagues (Chris Tucker and Jason Bateman, both excellent as always). He has to persuade Knight. He has to persuade Jordan’s ultra-alpha agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, nailing it like the real-life Jordan buzzer-beater). And when Falk refuses to give Sonny a meeting, Sonny has to persuade Jordan’s parents, more specifically, Jordan’s mother Deloris.

She is played by the magnificent Viola Davis because that was real-life Jordan’s one request for the film. And she is on fire. A scene near the end has a phone conversation between Deloris and Sonny that will be in the highlight reels for both stars forever.

Affleck is a fine actor and a better-than-fine director. As an actor since childhood, his skill at selecting the right actors and allowing them to do their best is to be expected. He also has an exceptional sense of narrative structure. The script from first-time screenwriter Alex Avery was chosen as Best Unproduced/Blacklist Screenplay of 2021. He gets sole credit, but Affleck and Damon, Oscar-winning screenwriters in their 20s for “Good Will Hunting,” worked with him on the final version. It is the way the story is shaped that allows each of the characters to make a contribution and keeps us somehow wondering how it will come together.

There is also a deeper meaning, a medium is the message connection. It is the first film from a new company formed by Damon and Affleck that hopes to do for the people who work on films what Sonny did for Michael Jordan, recognizing the contributions of below-the-line crew like cinematographers, designers, and sound technicians with a chance to share in the profits of the work they help to create. Let’s hope they all do as well as Jordan, who, according to the film’s ending updates, makes $400 million a year from the Nike products bearing his name.

Parents should know that this film has constant strong “locker-room” language

Family discussion: What made Nike different from its competitors? Which of the Nike principles do you think are most important? Would you buy something just because it had the name of a celebrity on it?

If you like this, try: “Sole Man,” the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about Sonny Vacaarro and some of the interviews with Vacarro on YouTube, especially the ones concerning his reversal from creating marketing programs that exploited amateur athletes to leading the Supreme Court challenge that recognized their right to be paid for the use of their images and names

Moving On

Posted on March 16, 2023 at 5:50 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are back for the second time in two months, following “80 for Brady,” and if there is ever a Jane and Lily movie-of-the-month club I will be the first to sign up. The screenplay of “Moving On” is not up to their level, but hardly anything is. Despite the unevenness of tone and some sags in the narrative, the two of them are a delight and their way with a line is so irresistible.

Claire (Fonda, looking gorgeous in white hair) and Evelyn (Tomlin looking like an aging flower child) were close friends in college but have been estranged. They meet at the funeral of another college friend. Claire announces to the friend’s mourning widower, Howard (Malcolm McDowell) that, now that her friend is dead and cannot be hurt by it, she intends to kill him. That weekend. And her next step is to try to reconcile with Evelyn to bring her on as an accomplice. The rest of the film takes place over the next few days, as we learn something about the past that separated the friends, what they have been doing since, how their various plans to carry off this homicide develop, and spend time on another reunion. Claire’s ex-husband Ralph also attends the funeral, and he is played by Richard (“Shaft”) Roundtree, so you know there will be some romantic sparks.

Speaking of reunions, this film reunites Tomlin with Paul Weitz, the writer/director of her underseen film “Grandma.” That film did a better job of juggling a very serious theme, a teenager asking her grandmother for help getting money for an abortion, with drama (there is also a complicated reunion of a formerly married couple) and some dark humor. This one sets a tone at the beginning that, even with the threat of murder, is off-kilter with the trauma of what happens later.

But on the way there, we get the truly enjoyable performances of two veterans at the top of their game, who, after seven seasons of “Grace and Frankie” are exquisitely attuned at bringing out the best in each other. Evelyn, a retired cellist in an assisted living facility, has most of the best lines and Fonda has most of the character work, and both are never less than sublime.

Parents should know that this movie has very mature material including the plotting of a murder, with references to rape. There are sexual references and a non-explicit sexual situation. Characters use strong language and drink alcohol.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Claire tell Ralph what happened at the time? Why didn’t Evelyn tell Claire the truth? What advice would you give Claire?

If you like this, try: “9 to 5,” “Grace and Frankie,” and “80 for Brady”

You People

Posted on January 26, 2023 at 5:33 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout, some sexual material and drug content.
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drugs including cocaine
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril, no one hurt
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	January 27, 2023

Amira, a Muslim Black stylist and costume designer (Lauren London) and Ezra, a Jewish white guy with a boring job in finance who would rather be a podcaster (Jonah Hill) fall in love in “You People,” a comic contest between two equally offensive sets of parents. Her parents (Nia Long and Eddie Murphy as Fatima and Akbar) disapprove and try to undermine the relationship. His parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and David Duchovny ask Shelly and Arnold) are clueless about the cringe-inducing, reductionist racism of their attempts to welcome Amira. Falling somewhere down the spectrum from the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” and the sincere if stilted drama of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” this film, co-written by star Hill and director Kenya Barrios (“Black-ish”) plays it for comedy, with an exceptionally strong supporting cast. And it is not afraid to include some stinging commentary amid the romance and the laughs.

It gets off to a strong start with Ezra and his podcast co-host Mo (Sam Jay) laughing about their fantasy versions of Barack Obama, clearly improvised. The jokes are more outrageous than funny, but it is a delight to hear the two riff off of each other with witty affection. We then see Ezra at Yom Kippur services with his parents, who gently disapprove of what he is wearing (casual kicks) and not wearing (a kipper head covering). The meet-cute is when he gets into what he thinks is his Uber, but what turns out to be Amira, who has gotten lost. After a moment of panic, they hit it off and soon they are dating. They share the same shoe game and commitment to supporting one another. And they just enjoy spending time together. And then it becomes time to to meet the parents.

The surprise in the film is Eddie Murphy, who plays it absolutely straight as Amira’s dignified father and makes Akbar into one of the movie’s highlights. There’s no winking at the audience, no wild exaggeration, and the more serious he is, the funnier he is, especially when one of his ploys backfires. He leaves the goofiness in the more than capable hands of Mike Epps (as Akbar’s brother), “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson, the always terrific Sam Jay, and more. Murphy, the real-life father of 10 children, knows all too well what it is to measure a suitor against his expectations, and this is one of his best roles.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a lot of fun with the role of Ezra’s mother, who tries so hard to show she is an ally that she over-corrects, while her husband tries to show how hip he is by talking about how much he likes rapper Xzibit. Instead of getting to know Amira by, for example, asking her about her work, she chatters about looking forward to brown grandchildren and goes woke Karen on a spa attendant she mistakenly thinks was racist. The white side of the cast also has an exceptionally strong group in supporting and cameo roles, from legends Hal Linden, Richard Benjamin, Rhea Perlman, and Elliott Gould to younger familiar faces Rob Huebel and Bryan Greenburg. Look for Romy Reiner (daughter of Rob, granddaughter of Carl) on a date with Ezra, director Barris as an airplane passenger, and a sign advertising London’s late activist/rapper romantic partner, Nipsey Hustle, who also has a song on the soundtrack.

The script is uneven at times. The bachelor party in Las Vegas and bachelorette party at a spa do not work as well as the sections at home. But as the characters discover, good will and a sharp sense of humor can overcome a lot of obstacles.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references and non-explicit situations, drinking and drugs, and a visit to a strip club in Las Vegas.

Family discussion: How would your family react to a new boyfriend or girlfriend? How would you have handled the meeting of the parents? What made them change their minds?

If you like this, try: “This Christmas” with Lauren London and “Superbad” with Jonah Hill

Ticket to Paradise

Posted on October 20, 2022 at 5:12 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some strong language and brief suggestive material
Profanity:	A few strong words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness portrayed as humorous
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril, animal bites
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 21, 2022

Director/co-writer Ol Parker has taken most of the ingredients from the hit “Mamma Mia” and remixed them, as he did with his sequel, “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!” Oscar-winning actors of vast charm and charisma. Screensaver-pretty settings on the shore. Wedding plans for a young couple that the older folks think may be too young. Bringing together people who have not seen each other for a long time and have unfinished business. All of which can be combined for entertainment value. But in this case, “Ticket to Paradise” leaves out the most important element in the success of the “Mamma Mia” films: the music of Swedish singing sensation ABBA. And it leaves out the most important element in the success of any movie: believable characters we want to succeed.

It gets pretty far on the screen chemistry of its two leads and up-and-coming star Kaitlyn Dever (be sure to check her out in “Rosaline,” “Booksmart,” and “Short Term 12”). George Clooney and Julia Roberts play David and Georgia Cotten, battling, bitter exes who divorced 20 years ago, after a five-year marriage and are still so hurt and angry they insist on not being seated together at their daughter’s college graduation. Dever plays their daughter Lily, who loves them both and tries to please them but finds it all exhausting. She is headed to law school, but first she and her BFF Wren (the always-great Billie Lourd, also from “Booksmart”) are off to a vacation in Bali. So basically the rest of the movie takes place in my screensaver, which the characters in the movie credibly keep calling the most beautiful place in the world. There she meets and falls in love with a local seaweed farmer with a great smile (Maxime Bouttier as Gede). And she decides to marry him, even though he lives half a world away from her home in Chicago and she’s only known him a month. Her parents decide they will suspend hostilities long enough to stop the wedding. And they think the best way to do that is to pretend they are on board while they subvert it every way they can. So, basically, “Mamma Mia” plus Roberts’ own “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” But no ABBA music and no Rupert Everett to disguise the fact that it lurches from one dumb situation to another.

Roberts and Clooney do their considerable best, and for those, and there are many, who would pay to hear them read the phone book, this movie will do the trick. But we can see the effort they are putting in to sell material, dialogue and situations, that are just not up to the task. Roberts uses her dazzling smile and endearing laugh (despite costumes designed to make her look dowdy even though she is supposed to be a highly sophisticated art dealer) and Clooney uses his raffish charm, all of which go a long way, just not long enough to withstand the dreariness of a storyline that depends on intended-to-be-hilarious animal bites and intended-to-be-charming insults between exes. It is childish, selfish, and exhausting. Like Lily, we wish we could be half a world away from it, gazing at the sunset from a pristine beach.

Parents should know that this movie has mild peril including a snake bite, some mild sexual references, and a few bad words.

Family discussion: What do we learn from the different versions of David’s proposal we hear from both sides? What will happen to Lily and Gede?

If you like this, try: “Mamma Mia” and its sequel and better Roberts and Clooney movies like “Oceans 11,” “The Runaway Bride,” and “One Fine Day”