JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA/THE CREW: Blu-ray (Touchstone 1998-2000) Mill Creek Entertainment
A spirited,
occasionally clever spoof of just about every mafia movie you’ve ever seen – as
well as a wicked jab at such iconic movies Jaws,
The English Patient, Jurassic Park and Forrest
Gump - Jim Abraham’s Jane Austen’s
Mafia (1998) spins its goofy yarn about ‘disorganized’ crime with all the
aplomb of a glorified Saturday Night
Live skit, infrequently outstaying its welcome, but on the whole retaining its
feel good with a few meandering dry spots factored in. The Abrahams, Greg Norberg,
Michael McManus screenplay is an unprepossessing claptrap whose homage to The Godfather parts one and two is so
transparently obvious yet strangely salvageable.
Jay Mohr stars
as Anthony Cortino; a would-be mafia chieftain who inherits this syndicate
after his father, Don Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino (played by Jason
Fuchs as a precocious accident-prone boy back in Italy and Lloyd Bridges as an
equally bumbling old man living in America) – sometimes referred to as Don
Cortisone – is shot 47 times by an assassin disguised as a priest (Richard
Abrahams) during his son Joey’s (Billy Burke) wedding to “some Italian girl”. The Don survives, only to be offed by his
pint-sized nephew, Chucky (one of the film’s less successful homages; this one
to the horror cult classic - Child’s Play).
Anthony is in love with Diane Steen (Christina Applegate); a doe-eyed whimsical
idealist who fears that she will always be “just
a Protestant chick who never killed anybody” if she marries into the
Cortino clan.
After the
opening credits that have Anthony being blown up in his car (a complete rip off
of Scorsese’s Casino, with its only
distinction being that Mohr’s flailing buffoon does some cheerleading with a
pair of pom-poms and also completes a slam dunk into a basketball hoop while
sailing through the flames) we regress to the 1930s; to the Italian province of
Salmonella. Here, the local peasantry are preparing for the Festival of the
Olives, complete with nuns juggling genoa salami, a Pope on stilts and Miss
Pimento; their resident beauty queen, riding atop a float next to Jeopardy game
show host, Alex Trebek (I confess, this last in-joke utterly escapes me).
Young Vincenzo
offers to take a large package for his father, a Sicilian postman named Luigi
(Anthony Crivello) to the lavish estate of the local mafia chieftain Don Ruffo
(Stefan Lysenko) who is in the middle of a passionate seduction when the boy
arrives. Ruffo is displeased by the intrusion but becomes enraged when Vincenzo
drops the parcel, revealing that it contains cocaine. Ruffo releases his ‘guard
sheep’ who take one sniff of the white powder and become as docile as…well…sheep.
Ruffo then tries to shoot Vincenzo with his shot gun, only to snap off his own
thumb and use it as a bullet instead. Vincenzo gets away but is discovered with
his family at the Olive festival where Luigi is shot, falling off the wagon –
literally - while Vincenzo’s mother (Sofia Milos) blames his collapse on his
alcoholism; “Twelve step program my ass!”
Vincenzo is
hidden in a donkey’s anal cavity and taken to the docks as just another migrant
stowaway aboard the steamer, Il Pacino, get it? Instead, he trips, becoming
entangled in a fishnet and falling overboard, swimming the length of the
journey to Ellis Island where he is identified by an immigration officer by the
Armani windbreaker he is wearing. Vincenzo briefly meets Jenny (Allyson Call) –
another newly landed immigrant. The two share a moonlight wish upon a star,
with Vincenzo’s being instantly fulfilled as Jenny’s cleavage exponentially
inflates to reveal a set of very perky nipples.
Flash forward
to Joey’s wedding. Anthony introduces Diane to the family. She’s polite and
plucky but decks Joey in the chops by accident. Joey is psychotic;
self-indulgent and becoming hooked on cocaine after rival Don Gorgoni (Vincent
Pastore) offers the aged Vincenzo a ground level ‘piece of the action’ but is
turned down because Vincenzo mistakes the investment as non-dairy creamer.
After Vincenzo is riddled with bullets, Anthony beats sprinter Flo-Jo to his
father’s side. Diane and Anthony part over his intension to kill Gorgoni for
the attempt on his father’s life. Meanwhile, Las Vegas’s Don Cesar Marzoni
(Tony Lo Bianco) helps Anthony hide out, making him the manager of The
Peppermill – a posh casino and resort. But he also sets Anthony up by
introducing him to the femme fatale, Pepper Gianini (Pamela Gidley). Asked by
Anthony about her background; “Any
Sicilian in you?”, the tart and very sly Pepper replies, “Not since last night!” Despite this auspicious introduction, Pepper
and Anthony quickly become lovers and later wed. Anthony brings Joey into the
Peppermill as thug muscle. But the psycho is so ramped up on cocaine that he
cannot even accurately assess who is cheating the house at poker, shocking
virtually everyone except the culprit – including all of the dealers and
cocktail waitresses - with an electric cattle prod at Anthony’s behest. Worse
for everyone, Joey – who is exceptionally well endowed - has begun an affair
with Pepper. When Anthony discovers them in their flagrante delicto he is
livid. Attempting to shore up their fractured fraternal relations, Joey turns
to confront his brother, accidentally knocking over a very expensive vase with
his still erect penis.
Afterward Joey
and Pepper plot to rid themselves of Anthony by having him blown up in his car.
Don Vincenzo Cortino dies after being sprayed with some DDT by Chucky. However,
Anthony has survived his assassination attempt, returning for his father’s
funeral horrifically disfigured. His grey-skinned cadaver-like appearance
repulses all of the attendees and the priest who take their turn spewing
projectile vomit on the casket (The
Exorcist, anyone?) and Anthony decides to take his revenge on all those who
have challenged ‘the family.’ He sends
his mother (now played by a humpbacked Olympia Dukakis) to the Peppermill. She
devours a bunch of broccoli before turning her Spanks toward a lit candle in
Pepper’s suite and breaking wind; thereby blowing up her daughter-in-law.
Anthony also has a special parcel sent to Joey’s home from ‘Steven’s Pet Shop’ (a
spoof on Jurassic Park, with baby velociraptors
emerging from the package to tear apart Chucky). Joey is exiled to Fargo where
he establishes a male fertility clinic. Finally, Anthony sends Fatso Paulie
Orsatti (Paul Hammond) to impersonate Michael Flatley during a Vegas styled
review of Riverdance, where he decapitates Don Marzoni by kicking his head with
his steel-toed tap shoe.
Anthony, who
has miraculously recovered from his wounds (all but a Band-Aid on his chin),
now pursues Diane who has since become the President of the United States and is
within arm’s reach of achieving world peace. She forgoes this monumental
achievement to marry Anthony instead, particularly after discovering that – in her
absence – she has become a mother (don’t ask…just run with it). Anthony
introduces Diane to her son (also named Diane and played by T.J. Cannata).
After their wedding Diane is outraged to learn in the press of the hits Anthony
carried out right under her nose. Yet, a simple denial from Anthony is all that
is required to reset her outrage. The film ends with a minor character
masquerading as an Eskimo and harpooning Barney – the loveable children’s
dinosaur.
Jane Austen’s Mafia has its moments, but a goodly number
of its jokes turn rancid or become moderately lame to downright wan
regurgitations of stuff we’ve already seen elsewhere. Throwing a litany of
predigested lowbrow fluff at the screen and hoping something will stick – and it occasionally does – only serves
to remind just how little there is to appreciate beyond this diluted silliness.
The parody becomes anemic; the spoof losing its fizz almost immediately; the
humor not nearly as gut-busting as oddly suppressed and repetitively mind-numbing.
The characters are cardboard cutouts at best, with about as much relevancy as a
Harvard lampoon. Mafia isn’t funny
so much as it’s ironic and strangely sad and that’s a shame.
But even it
seems like highbrow pop art compared to Michael Dinner’s The Crew (2000); a woefully mismanaged and undernourished mishmash.
Barry Fanaro’s screenplay cataclysmically mangles its scenario – that of four
over-the-hill wise guys reduced to working a variety of retail service gigs
just to hang on to their ramshackle South Beach Florida apartment on the cusp
of being remodeled into a swanky upscale hotspot for the perpetually buff from
the world of the anatomically gifted. We meet our four ‘retired’ mobsters;
Bobby Bartellomeo (Richard Dreyfus), Joey ‘Bats’ Pistelli (Burt Reynolds), Mike
‘The Brick’ Donatelli (Dan Hedaya) and Tony ‘The Mouth’ Donato (Seymour Cassel)
on the front porch of the hotel, lazily ogling the firm bodied set parading
past with modest disdain.
In a
retro-fitted flashback prologue that is way too long and utterly pointless we
learn how all of ‘the crew’ acquired their nicknames; none of this background
info ever referenced again in the movie. When the fellas learn that they are
likely to be evicted from their shared digs because of sky-rocketing rent they
decide to take matters into their own hands. Mike, who has since become a
mortician’s assistant, steals an unclaimed cadaver from the morgue, with the
intension of shooting him in the lobby; thereby frightening the residents away
which will also cause the landlord to drop the rent. The only problem is that
the corpse turns out to be the late father of Raoul Ventana (Miguel Sandoval) a
Columbian drug lord who promises revenge for the…uh…murder.
In the
meantime, Tony – a man of very few words (okay, practically none), but an
incredible zest for…well…shall we say, other recreational activities…takes up
with Ferris (Jennifer Tilly) whose real name is Maureen Lowenstein; a busty
stripper with the I.Q. of a moth but an enterprising sense of larceny to get
back at her stepmother, Pepper (Lainie Kazan). After Tony inexplicably
confesses to Ferris that he and the boys are responsible for planting the body
in the hotel lobby, she blackmails the lot into plotting Pepper’s murder so
that she can inherit her late father’s wealth and estate. The plan goes awry,
predictably, when the boys – who have no stomach for killing – decide instead
to kidnap Pepper and torch the house. They plant a skeleton stolen from the
science lab to fool the police and Ferris into thinking Pepper has died in the
fire.
Two problems;
first, no one thinks to examine the skeleton – which is not real but a plastic
replica with a tag clearly identifying it as being ‘Made in China’. Second, the
flames from the fire inexplicably carry over to the house next door belonging
to Raoul who now believes that one of his rivals is trying to send him a
message or simply rub him out. In the meantime, police detectives Olivia Neil
(Carrie-Anne Moss) and Steve Menteer (Jeremy Piven) are hot on the trail of the
first crime; stopping to casually interrogate ‘the crew’ about their
whereabouts on the night the body turned up in the lobby. Although she does not
recognize him, Bobby realizes that Olivia is his estranged daughter whom he has
not seen since she was four years old.
Olivia and
Steve had been a hot item at one time; that is until she discovered a pair of
panties in the backseat of his car that she quietly sent off for DNA testing to
confirm her suspicions. Now she regards him as pond scum; despite the fact that
he’s exceptionally gifted at sucking her toes. Yeah…it’s gross. The long and
the short of it is that Steve actually works for Raoul. The boys eventually reveal
to Ferris that they have spared Pepper’s life moments before Raoul’s men
capture Tony, Pepper, Ferris, Steve and Olivia, taking everyone aboard a
steamer docked nearby where Raoul is awaiting a very large shipment of drugs.
Bobby, however, has escaped and together with Joey gathers together a lot of
the other retired mafia boys for one last hurrah. In the ensuing confrontation,
Raoul and his men are apprehended, Olivia learns the truth – about both her
partner and Bobby – and Raoul and his men are arrested by the police.
The Crew is a sort of geriatric ‘goodfellas’ but without
Scorsese’s knack for telling compelling stories about the mafia; a tale impeded
by its lack of good sense to clarify for the audience whether it is trying to
be a comedy with dramatic elements factored in or just a downtrodden melodrama
with light comedic touches liberally applied to little or no effect. As a
result, it quickly becomes an oddity; a mutt of a movie that never manages to
escape from the purgatory of its artistically-bankrupt pound. The initial setup
is depressing to say the least; four overgrown has-beens popping their
medication and dreaming about their glory days long since gone by. Their resolution to the rent control problem –
planting a cadaver in the lobby – is so ridiculous and implausible that the
narrative quickly degenerates into a grotesque lampoon, but without the
necessary irony-inducing chortle to pull any of it off. Instead the story
lumbers along; the movie in its own late stages of Alzheimer’s as Fanaro’s
screenplay readily forgets the trajectory of its story, waffling between
quaintly absurd vignettes that do little to establish character or evolve the
plot. Richard Dreyfuss is all but wasted as the storyteller who bookends this
lugubrious affair while Burt Reynolds can barely contain his disdain throughout
– obviously appearing in this one only for the money. Lainie Kazan must need
the paycheck pretty badly too; reduced to a blubbering caricature of the
overprotective/bossy Jewish mother who finds…uh…happiness…by wedding Tony in the
final reel. Even at a scant 87 min. The Crew outstays its welcome. It is
about as appealing as watching paint dry.
Mill Creek
Home Entertainment is at it again; compressing lesser known catalogue titles onto
a single Blu-ray and slapping out 1:78.1 transfers with little regard for the
overall quality of their product. Thankfully, the results on this combo aren’t
quite the disaster as some of their previous efforts (Stella immediately coming to mind). Mafia is worse for the wear – odd – because the image starts out
very strong with vibrant colors and solid contrast levels. About mid-way
through however, the print acquires a very heavy patina of grain that borders
on digital noise, the image becoming gritty and slightly unstable with some
bleeding around the edges.
Watch the
scene where Anthony confronts Pepper and Joey about their affair. Here, flesh
tones sudden veer into piggy-pink hues while background information almost
breaks apart from some sort of unquantifiable digital noise. Contrast also gets
blown out. On the whole, The Crew is
a much more visually consistent viewing experience; good solid contrast
throughout and rich colors that briefly look washed out near the end of the
movie. Mill Creek won’t win any awards for this disc, but the transfers are
passable for movies that are decidedly very below par for what great film-making
is all about. The DTS 5.1 audio on both is competent. No complaints, but no
outstanding moments to speak of either. Extras are limited to trailers. Not recommended.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
Mafia 2.5
The Crew 2
VIDEO/AUDIO
Mafia 2.5
The Crew 3.5
Extras
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