THE CREW --------
Now that we've had our of fill of mob shrink comedies, it's time to movie on to the senior set in "The Crew." Narrator Bobby Bartellemeo (Richard Dreyfuss, Casey Siemaszko in flashbacks) fills us in on his and his mob buddies' pasts and present. Joey "Bats" Pistella (Burt Reynolds) is the muscle of the group with a hair trigger temper that's just cost him his job at Burger King. Mike "The Brick" Donatelli (Dan Hedaya) is the sweet but dim one who loves his new profession as a corpse cosmetician. Tony "Mouth" Donato (Seymour Cassel) is the ladies man who doesn't say much, but still wows them on the dance floor where he makes his living as an instructor.
Bobby himself was the brains and leader of the group and is responsible for leading them all to retirement in South Beach. Bobby lost his wife and small daughter Olivia over his mob ties and had heard that they had moved here. Now the foursome need to cook up a plan to save their homestead - the ramshackle Raj Mahal retirement hotel is in danger of being converted into pricey condos.
They fake a mob hit in the lobby with one of Brick's clients to drive away potential business and it works! The landlord even decreases their rent to get them to stay. But things quickly get messy. The corpse turns out to be the father of a notorious drug lord (Miguel Sandoval). Mouth blabs all to stripper Ferris (Jennifer Tilly) who blackmails them into putting a hit on her mother-in-law Pepper Lowenstein (Lainie Kazan). The detective on the case turns out to be Bobby's long lost daughter (Carrie-Anne Moss, "The Matrix"). Comedic capering ensues.
The screenplay by "Golden Girls" writer Barry Fanaro is just too loud, messy, overly ambitious and overly reliant on coincidence. This type of senior crime caper was handled far better over twenty years ago in "Going in Style." There's so much plot you begin to lose the sense of why certain things are happening. A subplot that has corrupt cop Steve (Jeremy Piven) trying to win back Olivia is totally superfluous (as if having Bobby's daughter turn out to be the law wasn't hackneyed enough).
The cast can't be faulted, however. The four leads are all endearing, particularly Hedaya's Brick who keeps in homey touch with mob guys all over the country via Christmas cards ('What are you - the yearbook editor?' barks Bobby after Brick updates them on former colleagues). Lainie Kazan is amusing as a hostage who turns happy when her abductors discover she's the owner of the deli they frequent.
The film tries to be a little different with a couple of slick editting moves (a morgue drawer is closed and segued to a file cabinet being opened) and a comedy bit right out of "Mouse Hunt," but the techniques are used a couple of times then dropped, making the film stylistically muddled.
"The Crew" is an OK piece of fluff to kill an hour and a half, but on the whole, the film lets down its talent.
C
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