At first, when suburban mom Kristin gets the mysterious call to head to Italy to settle the affairs of a dead relative, she protests she鈥檚 too busy. Then she realizes there鈥檚 not much keeping her: Her son is off to college, her job is dead-end, and her husband? He's cheating with the school guidance counselor.
So why not treat herself to a me-focused trip, a la Julia Roberts? Maybe an 鈥淓at, Pray, Love鈥� trip, muses Kristin (Toni Collette), to which her friend (Sophie Nomvete) replies that what she really needs, bluntly, is to 鈥淓at, Pray, $%&$.鈥�
Soon that鈥檚 the slogan for her trip. It also would a great alternative title for if they could get away with it. And really, they try to get away with most everything else.
That includes some cringe-worthy slapstick, some Tarantino-level violence, and also every Italian stereotype you can imagine (Grape-stomping? Check. Gelato, gnocchi and cannoli? Check. Speaking of cannoli: 鈥淭he Godfather?鈥� Check. Stanley Tucci鈥檚 food show? Check!) Some of this is to be expected, but 鈥淢afia Mamma,鈥� directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is over-saturated with shtick. And in a script which seeks to empower its protagonist by having her don a tight dress and commit murder with a stiletto heel to the groin (and eyeball), the goriest death is by clich茅. Nobody escapes it.
Not even the wonderfully versatile Collette, who does yeoman鈥檚 work selling the increasingly repetitive plot developments, especially in the latter half, and maintaining sympathy for her character, who's such a wide-eyed fish out of water, she鈥檚 never even seen 鈥淭he Godfather鈥� (a running joke, which like many jokes here is funny the first time).
The opening scenes are promising. We begin with always-welcome Monica Bellucci, as hardened consiglieri Bianca, surveying a crime scene full of dead bodies, including her boss Giuseppe Balbano, and declaring: 鈥淭his is war.鈥� Soon, Kristin gets Bianca's call about grandad, whom she never knew. Kristin grew up in America and always assumed grandad was a vintner (and Tony Soprano was in waste management...).
Soon Kristin arrives in Rome, ready to eat, pray and you-know-what. (After all, her husband鈥檚 you-know-whatting with the guidance counselor, who has one of the film鈥檚 funnier lines when she says, caught in the act: 鈥淚 want you to know I鈥檓 a feminist!鈥�) It seems like the you-know-what is about to happen quickly for Kristin too, because an impossibly handsome guy just happens to show up at the airport and take her number.
At the funeral, Kristin narrowly escapes death when the procession itself is attacked by the rival family (a cascade of oranges running down the cobblestoned street is a clever 鈥淕odfather鈥� reference, until the joke gets tired). At the family home, she鈥檚 shown a video message designating her as the successor. She tries to flee, but Bianca tells her she can鈥檛 run from her destiny.
And so the film chronicles her making peace with that destiny, even if peace means severing a few eyeballs from their sockets along the way.
Not that Kristin becomes evil or anything. Most of her bad deeds are done by accident or in self-defense. But the worst deed of all is that the movie can鈥檛 decide what it wants her, or itself, to be. It鈥檚 not fully slapstick comedy 鈥� wine-stomping scenes aside 鈥� and hardly a serious crime saga.
Most of all, it seems to want to tell a story of female empowerment; at one point Kristin is reminded to never let a man dictate who she can be or what she can do. Nice message, but it鈥檚 muddled. Who exactly is dictating? Surely not her husband, a caricature of a doofus.
And so, despite some satisfying moments, by the increasingly cringe-worthy last third of the movie you鈥檙e just annoyed that it seems to want to cover all bases 鈥� to have its, er, cannoli and eat it, too. Maybe Kristin should just eat, pray, you-know-what, and head on home.
鈥淢afia Mamma,鈥� a Bleecker Street release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America 鈥渇or bloody violence, sexual content and language.鈥� Running time: 101 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press
