in my review of there’s something about mary , i said something to the effect of ” laughter isn’t everything . ”
i now need to make a brief addendum to my postulate : laughter isn’t everything , unless i’m watching a jim abrahams film .
see , spoofs are easy with me .
i love movies , and i love movies that make fun of movies that i love .
sometimes i’m the only one in the theater laughing .
sometimes i laugh so hard that i embarass myself because my laugh is so high-pitched in comparison to my speaking voice ( it cuts right through everyone else’s laughter ) .
sometimes i laugh so much that my cheekbones are sore by the end of the film .
abraham’s latest film , mafia ! , induced this kind of hysteria upon me .
it’s gotten some mediocre reviews , but , hey , i’m the guy who laughs at everything .
there may be a lot of jokes that flop in this film , but there are far more that work , and i laughed so frequently that the failed jokes usually occurred as i was recovering from the previous bout of giddy madness .
i enjoy films like this because not one second of it is serious or thought-provoking .
most lighweight films that pose as comedies try to do other things , like develop characters , shape stories , and other such nonsense .
mafia !
has no pretentions about characters or story , and it exists for no other reason than to make people laugh .
the film begins on the perfect high note , with a mockery of the opening of casino .
our hero ( jay mohr ) is seen walking from a casino and getting into his car , which subsequently explodes and sends him flying through the air against a backdrop of flowing fire .
to describe the story of mafia !
is absurd and pointless , but i will mention that it basically follows the framework of the godfather films , with a lot of casino references inserted throughout .
along the way , the parodies seem arbitrary , and rarely victimize mob films : pictures like the english patient , forrest gump , and jaws undergo severe and hilarious bashing .
movies like this rely on just a few things , but the most important element is direction .
abrahams has been down this path many times before ( hot shots ! , top secret ! , airplane ! , and any other film with an exclamation point in the title ) , and so i hold most of the success of mafia !
to his experience .
he takes just the right attitude in each scene , and manages to wring at least a bit laughter out of even the most oddly placed references ( one inexplicable moment seems like it wants to make fun of titanic , but it never develops ) .
the actors are all energetic , which helps a lot with the tone of the film .
mohr ( suicide kings , paulie ) , who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors , is so good here .
he looks like he’s having so much fun that he’s containing his laughter in every scene ( watch his face in the sequence by the swimming pool ) .
he’s probably the only performer in the cast who manages to urge laughter without the help of the material .
lloyd bridges does a decent imitation of brando’s godfather , while pamela gidley is dead-on in a full-blown mockery of sharon stone .
the hard thing about writing reviews for comedies is that i’m supposed to give examples of things and be specific .
unfortunately , i was so constantly blindsided by laughter during mafia !
that i can’t remember a lot of what made me laugh .
but that’s a good sign : mafia !
is so funny that i wasn’t even given time to apply any of the scenes to memory .
i laughed so hard that it shut off my brain .
i know that doesn’t sound particularly complimentary , but when watching a dumb comedy like this , the first thing i want to do is shut off my brain .
finally , a film that does this for me .