TMS Movie Review: Mafia Mamma
(Bleecker Street Films)
Catherine Hardwicke’s Mafia Mamma doesn’t feel like it was made by people who are from Italy, or even people who just appreciate the culture from afar. Instead, it comes across like someone made a Hollywood movie based on their own fanfiction of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy (1972-1990). Every once in a while big studio comedies decide to target a certain ethnic group as low hanging fruit. Around a decade ago we got a lot of comedies featuring some weird anti-Asian jokes. Now the industry’s moved on to Italians if Mafia Mamma, Laura Terruso’s About My Father, Bill Holderman’s Book Club: The Next Chapter and Ray Romano’s Somewhere in Queens are anything to go by. I can only hope the latter three aren’t as dire as Hardwicke’s new movie.
In modern day southern California, Kristin (Toni Collette) is struggling to impress her chauvinist bosses as the copywriter of a marketing firm. At the same time, she’s accepting her son, Domenick (Tommy Rodger) moving away for college and discovering her phony, free-loading husband Paul’s (Tim Daish) infidelity. When Kristin learns her paternal grandfather in Rome she’s never met has passed and she’s inherited his business, she uses the funeral as an excuse to take a break from everything. Only problem is the business is actually the Italian mafia. Monica Bellucci co-stars as the head mafia advisor, Sophia Nomvete plays Kristin’s best friend and Giulio Corso appears as a handsome local Kristin falls for.
(Bleecker Street Films)
Besides the lazy Italian stereotypes and eye-roll inducing Godfather references every other scene, Mafia Mamma also has the issue of its dated and stale feminist commentary which seems like it belongs in a hokey 1960s B-movie. Collette, usually a guaranteed highlight of anything she appears in, is surprisingly annoying here rather than successfully campy. Bellucci is unfortunately embracing her recent typecasting of powerful mafia ladies since Martin Campbell’s Memory (2022). The male love interests are forgettable and comedian Rob Huebel is wasted as Kristin’s superior. Hardwicke is a filmmaker who I always want to champion since her unfair dive following the backlash for her tween blockbuster Twilight (2008). She started her career as a steady working production designer on many major films before breaking through strongly as a director with Thirteen (2003), Lords of Dogtown (2005) and The Nativity Story (2006). But unfortunately, since her vampire hit, Hardwicke’s been stuck resorting to schlock like Red Riding Hood (2011), Miss Bala (2019) and now Mafia Mamma.
Like with romcoms, I miss the mainstream, commercially successful studio comedy genre, which seems to have detoured to streaming sites these days. But I’m not desperate enough to support to borderline offensive mediocrity in the meantime.