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The only problem with Married to the Mob is that it is not funny. It dresses up exactly like a romantic comedy, but almost nothing that happens is funny. But if you can look at it as a film where almost nothing funny happens, then you'll have a really good time. It's a glitzy mob film, too, as per the title. Extremely glitzy. But the director, Jonathan Demme, is one of the few prevailing cult directors who fully and completely embraced the 1980s in his work from that decade rather than understandably pretending it was still the 1970s.
The opening credits combine 1980s animation, Italian-Americanism and mise-en-scene lathered on top of each other at once. From there, despite 1980sness, it feels about right. The lighting by Demme's frequent cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and jukebox soundtrack rife with widely varying pop and alternative jams are gaudy and that is indeed controlled and nuanced as part of the atmosphere. Demme is good at colorful instant characterizations in his visual and sometimes seemingly impetuous composition of a fun mix of styles, a plot that could've gone any which way, where a smooth FBI agent, played by a very bland Matthew Modine, trying to infiltrate a mafia family, sees a chance when a gun moll, played with come-hither allure by Michelle Pfeiffer, tries to leave the criminal lifestyle after her trigger-man husband, in just what you would hope for in an Alec Baldwin performance, is wacked.
The way it goes works for awhile, because Demme seems to have a firm hand on the wheel. He knows the significance of showing us the very subjective and relatable life-at-home scenes with Pfeiffer, as well as her cares and longings as a morally conflicted mom, although her relationship with son Joey is taken a bit for granted. What mobster's son is listening to party-pooper mom when dad's boss, played with Dean Stockwell's trademark naturalness and by far the scene-stealing stand-out of the cast, is giving him such awesome gifts? On the whole though, Demme's lathered-on stylizations are easily viewed as a novel take on a fun crime thriller tale.
Ultimately, though, we find we've been going the wrong way, because inevitably, Modine and Pfeiffer have to fall in love. That's not inherently bad, and every here and there it actually feels bearable, but as a romantic subplot, it is not handled interestingly, or well, hardly at all because it hopscotches across various sundry clichés, which fulfill the initial expectation of a cheesy 1980s date flick, and for that audience, I think it has just the right impact. But for someone who has found themselves genuinely interested in the story and the aesthetic approach, it is a let-down into state of tedium.
So it's a decent movie with huge missteps at certain points, but as a date movie or a nostalgic piece for those who grew up in the '80s, perhaps saw a lot of date movies in the '80s, the entertainment value is not as likely to fluctuate, except for said deficit in true laughs. There maybe a few scoffs, and it's very broadly tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't leave the comedy aisle with the high hopes with which I'd have initially entered. Whatever the case anyway, there are additional joys in bit roles by great character actors who have by now begun to fade, like Nancy Travis, Joan Cusack and Oliver Platt.


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