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"Analyze this" guy
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Mar 14, 2004
2
of
3 people found this review helpful
Hugh Grant is an upscale, Manhattan auction house manager who falls in love with school teacher Jeanne Tripplehorn. When he proposes to her, Tripplehorn is less than bowled over because, if he married her, she realizes, he'd be married to the mob. James Caan is Tripplehorn's father, a recovering mobster whose family is all too eager to get the naive Grant involved in family affairs.
Somewhere in the original conceit of MICKEY BLUE EYES, there's a really funny mob-parody movie. Certainly, there's a lot to spoof in the genre, because mob satire has fed everything from episodes of "The Simpsons" to feature films like MARRIED TO THE MOB (1988) and ANALYZE THIS (1999). But, the paint-by-the-numbers charade approach of MICKEY BLUE EYES misses its mark. Nevertheless, the flick does have its moments and Grant, who directed uncredited scenes of the movie, is always hard at work to pull it off.
The movie's main comic strategy -- to contrast the rough and tumble mob world with the stodgy, aristocratic art scene -- is mostly over-the-top, often degenerating into unconscionably absurd high jinks, more tantamount to B-humor than the thoughtful comedy MICKEY BLUE EYES spends so much time trying to convince us that it wants to be. At times, the movie wants us to care about these characters, as when it dredges up a heart-rendering back-story regarding Grant's fiancée, and her sop tale growing up as a mobster's daughter. Yet, at other times, as when one of the major characters is killed (on-screen) by Grant's fiancée, the action serves nothing but comedic functions.
The climax of the movie has nothing to do with the conflict of the story, which by right ought to be a resolution of Grant's entanglement that restores the characters to their status quo ante. Instead, the film builds up to an even more convoluted snare that plays almost exclusively for laughs, leaving tragic odds and ends that are only awkwardly tied-up in the finale. This is a messy and sophomoric approach to film comedy, and it doesn't even work as ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) humor because it isn't always funny.
In cataloguing the short-comings of the film, one might be tempted to say that Mr. Grant was wrong for the part; that he cannot play comedy. Certainly, this would not bear scrutiny, because Grant was *very* funny in FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994) and, to a lesser extent, in NINE MONTHS (1995). And, generally, the proposition that a non-comedic actor can be funny in a mob-parody film was proven to be true earlier this year by Robert De Niro in the aforementioned ANALYZE THIS. Therefore, the fault is not in our stars, but in our scripts.
(Carlos Colorado) |
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