BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Paul J. Nemecek This past summer was a record year for box office grosses in the film industry. Between the thoroughly predictable success of Star Wars: Phantom Menace and the completely unpredictable success of Blair Witch Project it's been a good summer for moviemakers. The two films mentioned above probably owe more to their marketing departments than their creative genius, but there were others that were charming (Notting Hill) and/or innovative (The Sixth Sense). Alas, as we reach the end of the summer season, we are left to sift through the wretched refuse that remains. This brings us face to face with Mickey Blue Eyes.Hugh Grant plays the title character, more commonly known as Michael Felgate. Michael is in love with Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Early in the film, he takes her out to dinner where he pops the question--in one of the few truly funny scenes in the movie. He knows she loves him, but she refuses to marry him, and he cannot understand why. He discovers why when he finally meets the family who are really, truly "family". Gina is sure that if they are married, her extended mafioso family will get its hooks into the man she loves and destroy him forever. He convinces her that true love will conquer all, and they decide to marry and beat the odds.Predictably, all is not smooth sailing. Before Michael knows it, and without his consent, he finds himself obligated to the mob. Thoreau once said "possessions are more easily acquired than got rid of". This apparently also applies to mob ties--although mob members appear to be fairly easily dispatched. The movie rather quickly degenerates into a series of sight gags, and a few almost funny scenes when Hugh Grant has to try to speak like one of the boys.Part of the problem here is the genre itself. The mafia/gangster film reached its apex with Coppola's Godfather films in the seventies. The best sign that a particular genre is wearing thin is when most of the films being made are parodies of the genre. Analyze This was much more engaging and original. Watching DeNiro parody the characters that made him a star was fun. Watching Hugh Grant here was just plain painful. James Caan--who was in the Godfather films--plays Gina's mobster father in a role that is flat and lifeless.There are inspired moments here, but they are few and far between. If you're a Hugh Grant fan, see him at his charming best in Notting Hill or rent The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. If you must have a mafia parody, rent Analyze This or check out Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven. If it's move theater popcorn you long for, check out Sixth Sense, one of the more suspenseful and innovative films of the summer. But Mickey Blue Eyes? Fuhgeddaboutit!

Electrified_Voltage In 1999, although I didn't actually see this mob spoof, I heard the line, "fuggedaboudit," was told where that line came from, and saw the trailer for the movie. I didn't actually see "Mickey Blue Eyes" until 2006, and by then, I knew it wasn't the most highly acclaimed comedy of all time, so I wasn't expecting to be blown away. However, I was hoping for at least a moderately funny spoof movie, and from what I remember, that was what I got. About 2 ½ years later, I've seen it a second time, and while I was still entertained by a good chunk of the film, it may not have been quite the same as before.Michael Felgate is an art auctioneer from England who currently resides in New York, and is dating a teacher named Gina Vitale. He wants to marry her, but doesn't know about her family! She has relatives, including her father, Frank Vitale, who are members of the Mafia, and this is why she turns down Michael's proposal, as she is afraid that if they marry, he will be lured into the world of organized crime! Michael promises not to let that happen, but this is easier said than done! After they are engaged, Michael finds himself involved in a money laundering, and finds himself questioned by suspicious FBI agents, but he must play along with this scheme in order to survive! It gets worse when Gina accidentally kills the son of a mob boss, and Michael decides to take the blame! The first scene in the film that stands out as really funny to me is the one where the owner of a Chinese restaurant stands at the table where Michael and Gina are sitting, and makes sure Gina eats her fortune cookie. For quite a while, the film goes fairly steadily, sometimes mildly amusing, and sometimes more than that. Another major comic highlight I can't forget is Michael having to pose as a gangster known as "Kansas City Little Big Mickey Blue Eyes" and having to try and speak with a New York Italian accent! The humour is not enough to carry the film, but there is also suspense, which definitely helps. For probably most of the film, it looked like my second viewing would be like my first, but I found that it started to lose its charm towards the end, I'm not sure why, but I was not left fully satisfied. Anyway, I would say this movie certainly doesn't fail miserably as a comedy, but as such, it certainly could have been funnier, though the story and suspense often makes up for that. There are much worse comedies out there, but I can see why "Mickey Blue Eyes" isn't as popular as "Analyze This", a mob spoof which came out the same year.

zardoz-13 "Mickey Blue Eyes" (*1/2 OUT OF ****) is an offer you can refuse.Hugh Grant deserves better than he gets from this atrocious, uninspired Mafia parody produced by his girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley for their production company Simian Films. Directed by Kelly ("National Lampoon's Senior Trip") Makin and written by Adam ("Little Big League") Scheinman and Robert ("The Cure") Kuhn, "Mickey Blue Eyes" flounders as a soggy fish-out-of-water farce about a bumbling Brit (Hugh Grant) at a New York art auction house who proposes to a pretty school teacher (Jeanne Tripplehorn) whose father (James Caan) holds a high ranking position in a sadistic Mafia family. Since "The Godfather" made La Cosa Nostra movies a sure thing with audiences, Hollywood has produced a line up of memorable mob movies. Now that most of the big-time Mafioso are sitting in jail, the appeal of the genre has spiraled.Happily, the success of not only "Analyze This" but also HBO's "The Sopranos" has given Family-oriented entertainment a new lease on life. Sadly, "Mickey Blue Eyes" lacks the hilarity of either "Analyze This" or "The Sopranos." The idea of an innocent entangled with the mob, as Grant's adorably clumsy English auctioneer Michael Felgate becomes, breaks no new ground. Moreover, Michael doesn't get to milk as much comedy from his mafia masquerade as Billy Crystal in "Analyze This." Worse, the mob gags are both too few and far between to get more than an occasional guffaw. The stereotypical treatment of Italian-Americans as pizza-faced gangsters doesn't help. Ultimately, Makin and company cannot spruce up the clichés that have been recycled ad nauseam.The early scenes promise more than the later ones deliver. Sloppy scripting by Scheinman, Kuhn, and an uncredited Hugh Grant sink this comedy in the wet cement that the mob reserves for canaries. Michael makes a living as the manager for Cromwell's Art House in Manhattan, the chief rival of Sotheby's, but Michael's business poses little threat to the giant. Later, he proposes to Gina Vitale (Tripplehorn), but she rejects him. She fears that the family and her father will corrupt Michael. Sure enough, her fears come true as Frank (James Caan) and mobster kingpin Vito Graziosi (Burt Young, trimmer than he ever looked in the "Rocky" movies) use Michael's auction house to launder money. While Michael struggles to keep Gina in the dark about his deals with the don, the FBI shows up to grill him about mob ties.Meanwhile, Vito's hot-headed son Johnny (John Ventimiglia) goes ballistic when Michael cheats him out of a $100 thousand dollars, so that he can stop a misinformed widow with a hearing problem from buying one of Johnny's gory paintings. Johnny tries to whack Michael. Ironically, Johnny's bullet ricochets and kills him. Frank covers up the killing by framing another mob. When the truth emerges, Vito forces Frank to gun down Michael at his wedding reception with Gina. The Scheinman & Kuhn screenplay teems with cretinous characters. How can Michael and Frank overlook Johnny's car, parked as it is in front of Michael's apartment, when they lug off Johnny's corpse to bury it. Vito figures out that Johnny died in Michael's apartment, because his thugs found his son's car parked in front of it. Further, the surprise ending is too implausible and convoluted to be funny.Comedy grows out of incongruity, but "Mickey Blue Eyes" boasts little incongruity. Admittedly, Hugh Grant is at the top of his self-depreciating form. Nobody can match his stammer, his clever witticisms, and appear as fashionably bewildered. Meanwhile, James Caan, famous as Sonny Corelone in "The Godfather," doesn't evoke the same presence as either fellow "Godfather" co-stars Marlon Brando did in "The Freshman" or Al Pacino in "Donnie Brasco." The chemistry between Jeanne Tripplehorn and Hugh Grant never comes to a boil. They have their best moment in a Chinese restaurant when Felgate spikes a fortune cookie with a marriage proposal. The supporting cast is a who's who of Mafia character actors, especially Joe Viterelli who played in "Analyze This.""Mickey Blue Eyes" is not a sure thing.

Framescourer Hugh Grant reprises his old moves in a film that reprises old themes for laughs. Recent (noughties) Hugh Grant films have had a knowing respectability about them. Before these were films like 9 Months and this one - recycled, market driven nonsense.So we're given the cast of The Sopranos (apparently), a ratpack soundtrack and endless, feeble mobflick parody that's not funny but black, stifling and cringeworthy by turns.Even Jeanne Tripplehorn is miscast, bringing too much gravity to her functional love interest. It's surprisingly difficult to pull off black comedy - applying the funnies to the wiseguys is no different and this one pretty much fails. 2/10