MAFIA! (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Jim Abrahams Writers: Jim Abrahams, Greg Norberg, and Michael McCamus Starring: Jay Mohr, Lloyd Bridges, Christina Applegate, Billy Burke, Olympia Dukakis, Pamela Gidley
"Mafia!" comes from one third of the creators of "Airplane!," a film that defined the gag-a-minute form of comedy, and did it with such sheer surreal delight that it's even more of a classic than the film it was parodying, "Airport." That person is Jim Abrahams, who is also one of the creators of "The Naked Gun" and "Hot Shots!" movies, which were also hilarious films. Why were they hilaroius? Because a good percentile of the millions of jokes told were funny. A film like this can never really fail as long as there are funny jokes, and it only works incredibly well if the jokes are not only funnier but frequent. The longer the space between the good jokes, the worse the film gets.
Such a film is "Mafia!," a gag-induced treatment of three mafia pics - "The Godfather," "The Godfather: Part II," and "Casino" - as well as assorted other flicks, everything from "Forrest Gump" to "The Gold Rush" to "Il Postino." I did laugh during this film, but there are two differences between this film and the other earlier greater films: 1) when I laughed, it was more of a chuckle then a whole-hearted laugh, and 2) these laughs were widely spaced between jokes that just fell completely on their ass and got more of a "nice try" reaction than anything else.
Take one early scene in the movie: Lloyd Bridges, in his final role, plays the Brando part in the first "Godfather" movie, and during his daughter's wedding, a tall henchman dressed as a priest walks up to him and says, "Say hello to my little friend." Instead of wipping out a gun like Pacino did in "Scarface" when he said this line, he opens the crease in his pants, and a little dwarf comes out with a gun and shoots Bridges. I laughed (although I laughed harder when I saw it for the first time in the previews). Then the dwarf continues to shoot Bridges over and over and over and over and over again, and as he's being shot, he starts doing what looks like dances, and the band plays whatever dance they think he's doing, everything from Swing to the Macarena. Just not funny. Nice try, though.
I'm not sure why the jokes aren't that funny. Abrahams is very adept at creating gags-a-second on his own, gags that are for the most part pretty hilarious. And he has some good performers on hand, like Jay Mohr, who was killer during his brief stint on "Saturday Night Live" and awesome as a scene stealer in "Jerry Maguire." He even has Bridges, bringing comic grace a la an older Leslie Nielsen, and giving it the right note of sentimentality since we loved him and he's gone. My god, he even somehow got Olympia Dukakis to show up in an all-too-brief performance as Bridges's aging, hunch-backed mother who at one point drinks prune juice during a parody of a famous scene in the first "Godfather."
Maybe it's not that funny because basically the plot of the parody, if you can call it that, it extremely sloppy. Even "Airplane!" had a coherent plot, sorta, one that you could say was well-laid out. The jokes in that movie came out of the scene itself, which were milked for all its comic worth. Here, the story moves primarily because of the plot. When a scene is over, it's because the writers ran out of jokes, and the parodies of the three chief movies just don't work together. The film opens with a parody of the opening scene of "Casino," with Jay Mohr playing the DeNiro character being blown up in his car, and then goes back to his father's childhood and early adulthood a la "The Godfather: Part II," then goes to the opening of the first "Godfather." These films don't it together as well, though, and even though I probably shouldn't be complaning that a plot is sloppy in a film like this, it may be part of the reason why it's just not that funny.
But the main problem with this film is the jokes aren't that funny. The best parts are the ones in the casino, where there are games like "Chutes and Ladders," "Candyland," as well as games like "Guess the Number" and "You Can't Possibly Win This Game." The worst parts are things in between the good jokes, the fillers, like how everyone runs into things and knocks them over. Maybe the biggest travesty is they do next to nothing with Lloyd Bridges. It's not that I'm sad he didn't get more screen time because it was his final performance - he was a great comic actor and he deserves more than a scene where he just falls down and closes venitan blinds on his head. They don't even allow him to do a Brando impersonation, the key to any joke made at the "Godfather" films.
But really, who wanted to see a parody of these films anyway. They're so intensely serious that any joke that had been made at them has probably been made already. Brando's performance is a laugh in itself - show me one person who can't at least try to do a Brando imitation? I said a film like this couldn't entirely fail, but this one comes pretty damn close.
MY RATING (out of 4): **
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