Name: Retro Film Review: Mafia! (Jane Austen's Mafia!, 1998)
Item: Mafia!
Rating: 30
Author: @drax

(source:tmdb.org)

Jim Abrahams' parodies are sometimes great, often funny and most of the time entertaining. However, they have one major flaw – they could be properly understood and appreciated only by those audiences that had some familiarity with the object of Abrahams' parody. Mafia!, Abraham's 1998 parody of classic Mafia-related films has that particular problem.

Just like in most of Abrahams' films the plot is just an excuse for rapid series of gags. However, some kind of story revolves around characters and situations modelled after Coppola's The Godfather trilogy and Scorsese's Casino. Protagonist is Anthony Cortino (played by Jay Mohr), son of the powerful mob boss Vincenzo Cortino (played by Lloyd Bridges). Unlike his brother Joey (played by Billy Burke), Anthony was disgusted with family business, left his father, became a war hero and started dating Protestant girl Diane Steen (played by Christina Applegate). When Vincenzo becomes target of assassins, Anthony returns to family and takes over mob-controled casino in Las Vegas. There he gets seduced by beautiful stripper Pepper Giannini (played by Pamela Gidley), unaware that she works for rival mob boss Cesar Marzoni (played by Tony Lo Bianco).

Abrahams' films offer three kinds of jokes and gags. First ones are those that parody the genre - in this case Mob epics. Second tier of gags take inspiration from any major Hollywood film made in last five years - for example, English Patient and Il postino. The blanks are filled by generic sight gags. Huge quantity of jokes is supposed to become quality of its own and guarantee that at least some of the audience would laugh. Unfortunately, Abrahams isn't as good as he used to be. Many of the jokes are simply uninspired – just like the original title Jane Austen's Mafia!, changed shortly before the premiere (and most of 1990s film references are going to be incomprehensible to younger audiences). On the other hand, some jokes work and some actors did at least a decent job. Jay Mohr and Christina Applegate are good in their parody of Michael Corleone's and Diane Keaton's roles in The Godfather. Lloyd Bridges is also very effective in what, sadly, turned out to be his last role. But all their efforts simply make Mafia! watchable and nothing more.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on October 12th 2004)