Does It Get Any Better Than This? FUGGEDDABOUDIT!!!

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2001)

You could make a list that would reach Saturn and back, of all the films you could watch, that serve as on-screen primers on how NOT to make a movie. The list of those films that are the perfect examples of HOW to do it is lamentably shorter; those that instruct how to make a perfect sequel even more brief. At the top of that particular list stands THE GODFATHER, PART II.
People are often quick and harsh in their assessment of all the things that were wrong with the third sequel, and they are especially hard on Sofia Coppola. But even if she had turned in an Oscar-worthy performance, think about it...did Francis have a snowball's chance in hell of topping the Perfect Sequel?
First of all, we get a two-fer: not only do we get the magnificent performance from Al Pacino as Michael, the reluctant new Don Corleone, who has come full circle and has assumed the very mantle he had always hoped to avoid, as well as everything that goes with it, but we get Robert De Niro's breakout portrayal as young Vito in the old country. We get to see how the Family got started, and that the spiritual, moral and financial dilemmas that father and son had to face, spanning nearly a century, were not as different as either one of them might have thought.
The continuation of a story that deepens the situations and our insight into the characters; Gordon Willis' peerless photography; Dean Tavoularis' amazing sets and Theodora Van Runkle's costumes; the Nino Rota/Carmine Coppola themes that are so familiar to us now that they're almost subliminal, and that note-perfect casting of all the supporting players, even the appearance of some faces you may have forgotten were associated with the series, especially people like THE SOPRANO'S Dominic Chianese and CITY SLICKERS' Bruno Kirby.
Part Three never stood a chance.