When English auctioneer Michael Felgate proposes to his girlfriend of three months Gina Vitale he had no idea that his father-in-law to be was a Mafia kingpin and that this would result in some favours from Frank.
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Michael never thought it through when proposing to Gina without knowing well anything about her family or background. They had only been dating for three months but he felt strongly that she was the one and proceeded to go for a proposal in a Chinese restaurant. With the question in the fortune cookie, that Gina was refusing to actually open. Then given the comedy nature of the film it was given to the wrong table anyway.
I think that opening scene pretty much sums up that film is going to have some rather daft and silly moments throughout. Although when you then add in Frank Vitale her mafia father, something that Michael does not really notice to begin with and given his job is then brought into some of the schemes for a cut. Attempting to be all innocent he is then drafted into a world he had no idea about at all.
The nature of the film sort of reminded me of Analyse This which actually was also released in 1999. So we can now establish that 1999 was the year for comedy mob films. This one also had many actors from The Sopranos as well, just showing that only so many Italian-American actors were around at that time right? Although that was probably the thing I enjoyed the most spotting The Sopranos cast members!
The attempted funny nature of the film wears rather thin very quickly as well as predictable. I guess the mafia and people getting killed really just isn't something that can be funny? Well, that is how I felt about it in all honesty. It just all had a strange set up especially given Hugh Grant was pretty much the character he was in all the rom-coms he had been in and it just didn't work with James Caan's attempted mafia boss character.
I guess it attempted to be a different kind of romantic comedy and we found out it did not work at all. Obviously Hugh Grant's Michael is a likeable character and man who was very normal. But Jeanne Tripplehorn's Gina was truly horrible, I mean given what she did and then blamed everything on everyone else just made her extremely unlikeable from the start.
Sometimes attempting to mix two very different genres can work, in this case it certainly did not work at all. It tried is probably the best thing I can say about it really?
