It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Mac is a movie to prize if you are of Italian-American heritage, grew up or live near Italians, or want to look beyond the mobster cliché that surrounds them. It portrays Italians far more realistically than "The Godfather" -- a classic, but only concerned with a tiny fraction of Italian-American life -- as superior and extraordinarily hard- working artists, craftsmen, builders and family men, naive with money, awkward at sex, unprejudiced, and bewildered by women. It is funny, wistfully sad, compelling, sweet and powerfully LOUD. It is a treat of a movie, one of a string of small independent films to emerge out of the so-called "video auteur" age of the early 1990s. Its director and star, John Turturro, based the movie largely upon is dad and his own early years, and the film rings true with that kind of authenticity.

I just joined imdb because I couldn't sit by and let someone denigrating this great film be the initial thing people see in its summary.Mac is a film with shortcomings like any other but it does not deserve to be so summarily dismissed as that doogie fella does.The 'story' behind the film is that it's based in part on Turturro's father, so that some scenes are accused of being 'overacted' isn't really all that surprising.I won't give away the story at all, I'll leave it to you fine people to watch because this is one of those movies that damn well should be seen. I happened upon it by accident and felt very fortuitous for having nothing to do that evening.I was immediately drawn into this well shot and acted out film. With the exception of the the surreal opening part everything is immensely believable and I felt very connected to the characters. I felt better for having watched it and that certainly isn't something you get with most things flushed down the Hollywood toilet for our consumption.

john turturro plays his dad. hes really really into construction, carpentry, building houses. he quits the job for his jerk off boss and he and his brothers start their own business. then he starts pushing his brothers around kind of like his old boss did. this movie is cool the way it shows these things. it also shows a big part of the mans life it sort of feels like a trip or something 'i can remember way back before they were married, and when they met' when i see him and his wife together in their later years. theres a couple things i dont get in the movie like whats ellen barkin, what happens to her, what happens to his mom who is always screaming off-camera, did his wife really sell the houses? some people say this is all about some message about how the main guy is perfect, but i aint convinced. the last shot has him dragging his kid around by the hand like he were a doll. he is so obsesssed he drives his brothers nuts and they quit working for him. the character has got spirit and hes got problems. its a very interesting picture of the main character.

Boy, this is bad. It's as if Turturro, playing method as Barton Fink, had rapped out his own screenplay about "the common man" and somehow saw it get before the cameras. The opening few minutes are fine, but then goes downhill and doesn't recover. There's a vaguely sickening feel that Turturro feels this is some sort of Important Statement, as if he believed the fictional studio's hype and cast himself as an auteur, ready to deliver that Barton Fink feeling. An overlong, self-important mess.