Married to the Mob (1988)

Absolutely Fantastic

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

On the outside, Angela (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Frank de Marco (Alec Baldwin) is living a suburban life. But Frank is part of the mob. Angela is tired of the insular life of a mob wife, and wants to have just a normal life. She wants a divorce. Tony 'The Tiger' Russo (Dean Stockwell) is the boss. Both Tony and Frank have the same mistress Karen (Nancy Travis). So Tony kills them both and tries to move in on Angela as his new mistress but she moves away. Mike Downey (Matthew Modine) and Ed Benitez (Oliver Platt) are FBI agents who wonders if Angela is the new mistress.Director Jonathan Demme is making a comedy. I don't find much of it funny. I guess it's not that kind of ha-ha comedy. It uses all the mob stereotypes. Michelle Pfeiffer is accessing her inner Guido. It's an OK movie. Maybe it could have been better as a thrilling drama. As a comedy, I'm not sure at what or why we would be laughing.

Some reviewers have called this a screwball comedy. It did have some zany scenes, but all fell short of reaching the screwball level. Still, it was an enjoyable movie to watch. Michelle Pfeifer and Matthew Modine were good in their roles. But the laughs came mostly from Dean Stockwell and Mercedes Ruehl as Tony and Connie Russo. More work on a script and better direction could have boosted the funny scenes a couple notches. Then "Married to the Mob" would have been closer to the mold of the great screwball comedies of the early decades of filmdom. While it's an OK film for a laugh by adults, it's not a comedy for the whole family. The light-hearted treatment and scenes of the several gun-shootings earn this film its "R" rating.

A beautiful mafia widow; a lecherous mob boss; his hot-tempered Italian wife; and an FBI whiz kid: ad them all together with a soundtrack by David Byrne and you have another hip-to-distraction romantic comedy from director Jonathan Demme. The pace is swift; the characters are colorful; and the film benefits from a winning performance by Michelle Pfeiffer as the reluctant moll who wants to go straight. But underneath the cosmetic gloss are too many cracks (if not quite holes) in the plot, and at least one serious flaw: the casting of boyish Matthew Modine as a romantic leading man. Demme is, as usual, adept at juggling offhand humor with incidental violence, but the story moves in fits and starts, although there's a clue to suggest the script itself isn't entirely to blame: over the closing credits are tantalizing glimpses of outtakes which might have filled in the narrative blanks.

Have you ever tried a kind of food that your friend made, and then said to yourself, "wow, that was not a good mix"? Well, that is how I felt after watching this film.Many viewers will be left highly uncomfortable with this weird mix of crime and very, very corny comedy. Its almost like watching Mr. Rogers play a ruthless gangster, very weird. Some things just don't mix and this film clearly proves that.There are some very good performances here, as Dean Stockwell, Mercedes Ruhle, and Alec Baldwin are all excellent, but that doesn't make up for the lack of balance and symmetry in the film.Jonathan Demme has done some excellent work in films such as Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, but seems to be out of his element with this one.