The Age of Commercialism

Thanks for the memories!

An unexpected masterpiece

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

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!

It's films like this that make me grateful that i am not a film critic. If you're a film critic you have to sit there and watch the whole film, no matter how awful it is.I have tried to make it my practice to give films a chance but this one was so mind-numbingly awful that, after about 20 minutes my girlfriend and i just looked at each other and said 'let's go'.The premise is that Hugh Grant (playing the part, as he does, of Hugh Grant) is supposed to be a posh English twit enrolled into the Mafia. Even the premise betrays an inane, juvenile sense of humour - it's just not at all funny.Like crime in multi-story car parks, this film is wrong on so many levels.Save yourself the pain and do something more enjoyable - like poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick.

Hugh Grant is in someways a modern version of a comic actor who I have had problems with in viewing: Charles Butterworth. Butterworth would hem and haw, afraid of making some social faux pas while pursuing whatever business occupied his activities on screen. This diffidence while mildly amusing could get tedious after awhile. Similarly Grant will hesitate, and stammer a bit. But his English manners, and his good looks make his hesitancy far more easy to accept than Butterworth's. Certainly his good looks have made him an easy leading man type (whereas Butterworth always played in supporting roles).MICKEY BLUE EYES gives Grant far more to be nervous and hesitant about. He plays Michael Feldgate, a highly successful auctioneer at a leading house in Manhattan (his boss is Philip Cromwell (James Fox)). Michael has been romancing a schoolteacher named Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and has finally decided to propose to her. Besides causing an unintentional series of uproars in a Chinese restaurant, he is surprised to find Gina less than enthusiastic. After he meets her father Frank Vitale (James Caan) he follows Gina home and learns the reason for Gina's lack of enthusiasm (though not lack of love). Frank is a member of a Mafia family headed by Vito Graziosi (Burt Young), and Gina was always afraid that if Michael and she married he'd be trapped into the Mafia way of life sooner or later.Uneasily Gina agrees to the wedding, with Michael insisting that with her assistance he can avoid any real problems from Graziosi and his gang. But soon the subtlety of the mobsters proves too much for Michael (with or without Gina's help). Graziosi realizes that auctioning art can be useful as a way of laundering dirty mob money (he can have debts paid by having various debtors settle what they owe by buying items the mob puts up at auction). And Michael soon finds he is auctioning art by Graziosi's violent mental case son Johnny (John Ventimiglia) that are setting records - records the F.B.I. are showing great interest in. While worrying about this, Michael is also under pressure of trying to present a good, respectable front for a potentially lucrative client. Somehow the mobsters and the F.B.I. just don't seem to help create this image.Michael finds that everything Gina suggests, or her father Frank tries to help with fails, and soon the Englishman finds he is in the middle of an unwanted killing - one that can set off a mob war. He also finds that he has to parade around town with his erst-while father-in-law as an out-of-town underworld torpedo named "Mickey Blue Eyes" (actually, "Young Mickey Blue Eyes" from Kansas City, as opposed to "Old Mickey Blue Eyes" his dead dad, and the original "Mickey Blue Eyes" from Chicago!). This includes burying a corpse in an overused waste land, and ordering steak in a restaurant where "Mickey" is barely understood talking a version of underworld English, and upsetting customers by his anti-English remarks and his constantly dropping his gun.The cast is wonderful, led by a continually drained Grant who can't find any way out of the deeper and deeper hole he is in, Caan who has found that he has a comfortable niche in the mob - but has somehow lost his daughter's trust, Tripplehorn who finds that she is bloodily closer to the mob than she ever expected or wanted to be, Young who is properly sinister but ruthlessly smart, and Fox who constantly trying to put the best face on the worst situations (like talking to his potential client about respectability, opening a door, and finding Grant shaking his behind in front of his fiancé!). Even that late budding comic "goon" actor Joe Viterelli (who played "Jelly" in the ANALYZE THIS and ANALYZE THAT films) has a nice moment where he watches a television commercial about a very strong adhesive tape that can even bind people's hands - and makes a note for future reference when he needs to bind some person's hands! Until the last comic twists of the plot, the film entertains, and is certainly worth a "10" out of "10" on the scale here.

Michael Felgate (Hugh Grant) is a dapper art auctioneer, who's eager to marry Gina (Jeanne Tripplehorn) a school teacher he has been dating for three months, but first he wants to meet her parents. Frank (James Caan) Gina's father is a gangster, and now he wants to use Michael's auction house to deal in dubious artwork, and Michael has to try and blend in as a gangster himself, so he becomes the hilarious Mickey blue eyes.Surprisingly Hugh Grant captures this comedy character really well, spouting off stereotypical mafia talk in his own special way. Caan and Tripplehorn are both pretty good too, but it's Grant that seals the show.Generally funny throughout and with the odd really hilarious scene here and there, Mickey Blue Eyes goes way beyond my expectations, and becomes an entertaining comedy that's fun to enjoy.7/10