Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci, Sophia Nomvete, Alessandro Bressanello
Intro:
… a bit scattershot, but there are one or two well-written running gags that, combined with the lush and beautiful interiors, make it quite fun to watch.
Director Catherine Hardwicke made a big splash almost exactly twenty years ago with the edgy teen drama Thirteen. That film was bold, streetwise and hard boiled. Maybe age has mellowed her, because this mostly genial Hollywood comedy is none of those things. Not that it is completely flabby and safe, there are still gritty elements, even though these are oddly packaged.
Of course, a lot depends on your liking for our own Toni Collette (who is more or less an honorary American these days). She is in every frame of this film, and she is trying her very best to make the whole thing work.
She plays Kristin, a young middle aged mum living in the burbs. She helicopters around her late-teenage son Dom (Tommy Rodger), who is about to start college. Kristin obviously can’t let go, and she is still organising Dom’s packing right up to his departure. She is also a bit unsure about being left alone with her not really onboard husband. It is exactly at this time that she gets a message from Italy, telling her that the grandfather she hardly knew has passed away, and informing her that she is expected at his funeral. Combining all this with a holiday in Rome seems like it could be the perfect thing. She is an incurable romantic and tells her friend Jenny (Sophia Nomvete) that she thinks it will be her time to restore herself in an Eat, Pray Love kind of way.
However, she soon finds out that the recently departed Grandad was a mafia don and his Balbano crime family have a rather different kind of experience in mind for the hapless housewife. Enter an impossibly glamourous female gangsteress played by the timeless beauty Monica Bellucci (having a lot of fun playing broad comedy).
The idea of a comedic take on ordinary people suddenly caught up with the Mafia has been done before. This one doesn’t have too much new to add, but the cast are all enjoyably hammy and, of course the scenery (it actually was shot in and around Rome) is to die for. Sorry, let us rephrase that… One other aspect of note is that when Kristin – somewhat predictably – turns out to be rather adept at gangsterism, she gets into some extended and realistic fight scenes. Though this is obviously meant be funny, Hardwicke goes right over the top in a way that the choc top and glass of wine crowd might not find easy to stomach.
In many ways, the film is a bit scattershot, but there are one or two well-written running gags that, combined with the lush and beautiful interiors, make it quite fun to watch.
