Don't Blame Puzo

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 1999)

This had nothing to do with his brilliant book. Most of the plot was taken right from Rupert Cornwell's "God's Banker", the true story of vatican banker Roberto Calvi (Frederick Keinszig in this movie), who helped sicilian mob leaders (including the sinister P-2 fraternal society) defraud the church of hundreds of millions of dollars (and was found hanging beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in London in 1982). The rest of the film was Francis Ford Copolla's hastily thrown-together distortion of Puzo's epic, one of the finest novels in history. I was so repulsed by the awful plot that I barely noticed the often cited incompetence of Sofia Copolla, Diane Keaton, and Al Pacino (as well as the incomprehensible casting of Bridget Fonda, Eli Wallach, and George Harrison). Connie, the weak, dimwitted housewife is now the Godmother??? I really feel bad that Copolla's several hundred million dollar salary and royalties was too little for him to avoid tainting his own name with such a disaster.