When it comes to comedy, timing is essential. And for "Mickey Blue Eyes," the timing could hardly be worse. Although it's a generally agreeable farce, much of its material was already covered six months ago in the snappier "Analyze This," making "Mickey" look like a weak imitation.
It hardly helps that "Mickey" also includes many of the same supporting players and even some of the same songs as director Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob," which tackled almost exactly the same subject matter 11 years ago. Replace Michelle Pfeiffer's character in "Mob" with an eager-to-please Hugh Grant, tone down the darkness of Demme's humor and you've got "Mickey," which might as well be titled "Engaged to the Mob."
That's the situation Grant's character, an auction house manager named Michael, finds himself in when he proposes to schoolteacher Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn). She loves him, but she dreads the prospect of marriage, since that would tie the squeaky-clean Michael in with her father (James Caan) and his shady business associates, all of whom know the proper way to dispose of a corpse and the best tactics to use in strong-arming truck drivers.
At times, it looks as if "Mickey" might find a tone of its own. Certainly there's some fun to be had at the sight of the very English Michael struggling to sound like a gangster from the Midwest -- his attempt at a Kansas City accent lands somewhere between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Forrest Gump -- or trying to help his future father-in-law by unloading some incredibly ugly paintings as a way of laundering money. Grant, who has had some bad luck in his movie choices since "Four Weddings and a Funeral," proves here that his comeback in "Notting Hill" was not just a fluke. He's charmingly befuddled throughout the film.
But most of the time the farce seems forced and the story contrived. The best scene, involving mixed up fortune cookies in a Chinese restaurant, comes ten minutes into the film and as "Mickey" trudges along, the spaces between the laughs become longer and longer. Even a feeble attempt at a twist ending isn't enough to put the picture back on track. "Mickey" could have used more offbeat characters like Maddie Corman's overzealous and overemotional photographer or Scott Thompson's amusingly clueless FBI agent. Or how about surprise cameos by Robert DeNiro or Michelle Pfeiffer? That would have really made "Mickey Blue Eyes" worth watching. James Sanford
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