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Review Date: December 4, 2002
Director: Harold
Ramis
Writers: Peter Steinfeld, Harold Ramis, Peter Tolan
Producers:
Jane Rosenthal, Paula Weinstein
Actors: Robert DeNiro as Paul
Vitti
Billy Crystal as Ben Sobol
Lisa Kudrow as Laura Sobol
Genre: Comedy
Year of Rele
ase: 2002
PLOT:
Tough guy mobster Paul Vitti fakes his way o
ut of prison and back into the life of his tranquil shrink, only to find
himself forced to leave the mafia and into a "regular" job. After a few f
ailed attempts, his psychiatrist gets him a job as a consultant on a popu
lar mob-based TV show, but it isn't long before actual wise guys start sn
ooping around and Paul must decide if he's going to stick to the life of
an average nobody (just another "schnook") or the life of a mafia kingping
CRITIQUE:
I don't think anyone is gonna go into this pict ure expecting anything more than your basic rehash of many of the same ch aracters, jokes and situations from the original surprise hit, and I supp ose if that's what you're looking for, you might enjoy some of these fest ivities, but for someone like me...someone who likes sequels to take a fe w more chances, build on the success of their originals and attempt to ca rve out something special of their own (see ALIENS, T2, BLADE 2, etc...), this flick is a disappointment. Having said that, I did actually find my self guffawing quite a bit through its first 20 minutes or so, with vario us amusing circumstances involving DeNiro being slapped, DeNiro trying ou t new jobs and DeNiro swearing and nailing a "broad" in Crystal's house. Unfortunately, once things settled, the movie seemed to go through the mo tions, with jokes far and few between and an over-the-top heist conclusio n that felt about as inspired as I do to have sex after my one-man-shuffl es. Now either they ran out of jokes, they didn't have enough time to inv est in an actual story or the material itself has been played out in so m any different ways already (Sopranos anyone?), that the cow simply does n ot have any milk left to spare. The sad part is that the film really did hit some kind of stride early on with some of the "fish out of water" seq uences with DeNiro really bringing out mucho humor with him playing up hi s "mob" persona to a friggin' tee. But they barely touch on the hilarity that they might've been able to juice out of all that ("Did you know that they take taxes out of your paycheck?") and leave us dangling with only two or three small examples (the whole car salesman thing could have been explored much further-the TV show thing is played out, guys).
The film
also stoops down to rehashing some of the exact same lines from the orig
inal ("You, you...") and for me...they played about as well as Mike Myers
' "shwing" would today. But I don't want to make it sound like the movie
is a total waste, because it really isn't all that bad. It's got a handfu
l of funny moments early on, the outtakes during the end credits are a ga
s (but is that a good thing?), the TV show director has some comical turn
s and even Crystal pulls off a few funnies here and there. Another good t
hing is that Lisa Kudrow is barely used (thank you, God...there's only so
much of her damn Phoebe character that I can take in any movie!) and Ant
hony LaPaglia is decent as the Australian-Italian guy. The story does suc
k though and pretty much any scene involving Cathy Moriarty felt dead. No
t sure why. The film's editing also seemed pretty choppy (and I rarely no
tice those types of things), and the soundtrack, not one bit as memorable
as its original. All in all, I would recommend that anyone who enjoyed t
he first movie check this out...on video, and only if you're looking for
fluffy entertainment, but otherwise, don't waste your time, especially if
you're hoping to get involved in the story or be overwhelmed by one joke
after another. No rat-tat-tat here, folks...and certainly nothing worthy
of a sequel in the first place...unless of course...everybody was in it
for the money! Uhhhhmm, but people aren't like that...are they? Sigh. Bio
degradable sequel...coming up!