Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)

Starring: Hugh Grant, James Caan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Burt Young, Joe Viterelli, James Fox, Vincent Pastore, and basically the entire cast of The Sopranos
Grade: C+

All of the supporting characters were well cast, but they could’ve offered much more to the movie than what they were given. This idea of things having the potential to be “much more” is a criticism you’ll see a lot in my review for Mickey Blue Eyes.

Summary

In New York City, Michael Felgate (Grant) is an auctioneer who manages the Cromwell auction house. He auctions off some paintings to begin the movie but the last one is missing, so he’s forced to blame it on a delivery issue. He asks his assistant Helen (Margaret Devine) if his reservations and everything are all set and ready to go and she confirms. You see, Michael’s been dating Gina Vitale (Tripplehorn) for three months and intends on proposing tonight, though he’s not sure if it’s a good idea because he hasn’t even met her family yet. Helen agrees it’s a risky move, which doesn’t help his nerves at all. After dealing with the disrespect from the deliver guys who couldn’t give any less of a fuck that they showed up late and only delivered half of the paintings, Michael’s boss Philip Cromwell (Fox) offers him a ride in his limo. Already inside it is Mr. Morganson (Mark Margolis), an important client for Philip who is considering working with the Cromwell auction house for his father’s collections. He was there today for the delivery mishap and was not impressed. Philip drops Michael off at the middle school Gina teaches at and wishes him luck on his proposal. Next, Michael and Gina run to their reservation but after Gina makes fun of his run, they realize how late they are and decide to go to a Chinese restaurant instead.

At the restaurant, Gina admits she needs to have him meet the family, and she tells him her father Frank (Caan) owns the restaurant “The La Trattoria”. Following this, Michael wants to set up his proposal, so he gives a very specific fortune to the owner to put into the fortune cookie she plans on giving to the table. The awkwardness begins almost immediately because the owner is incredibly pushy to Gina about eating her cookie, and she refuses. A mini-argument is had until Michael convinces Gina to give in. Unfortunately, the owner screwed up and put the fortune in the cookie of the couple in the other aisle, and the woman over there agrees wholeheartedly to marry the confused man. Michael runs over, switches the fortunes with them, gives Gina the actual one, and sends the owner away, awaiting Gina’s response. Sadly, she says she can’t and leaves. Later, Michael goes to Gina’s apartment and asks her doorman Jimmy (Joseph R. Gannascoli) if she’s there, but he tells Michael she went to her dad’s house in a hurry. To find out where she went (and to meet the family), Michael goes to “The La Trattoria”. As soon as he leaves the apartment complex, Jimmy calls in and lets them know ahead of time.

Michael arrives and is immediately introduced to Gina’s idiot brother Ritchie (Paul Lazar). As Ritchie goes to get Frank, Vinnie “The Shrimp” D’Agostino (Viterelli) talks to Michael about the details of his jobs at the auction house, with Michael also mentioning his recent trouble with the delivery people. Johnny’s (John Ventimiglia) girlfriend mentions she likes art, and Johnny immediately starts arguing with her because he thinks she’s hitting on him. However, he immediately stops and leaves after his father Vito “The Butcher” Graziosi (Young) tells him to. Michael finally meets Frank who’s very cordial and polite. Frank insists they get to know each other a little, so they talk for a bit. Before they continue, Michael goes to use the bathroom, opens the wrong door, and finds a man in the freezer. He asks Frank about it, but he tells him it’s “maintenance”. Frank changes the subject, showing Michael pictures of Gina when she was a child, telling him how hard of a worker she is, and how her mother died at a young age. He then tells Michael he already knows of his idea to propose and allows him to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage (even though he already asked her, and she said “No”). After Michael awkwardly asks, Frank accepts happily. Michael drives to Frank’s house to find Gina, and she’s sobbing in her old bedroom. She admits she loves him but can’t marry him. To clue him in on why, she takes him outside for a walk on the sidewalk in case of the house being bugged.

Gina says she can’t marry him because of her father Frank. Michael thinks everything is fine now since he met most of the family at the restaurant, but there’s more to it than that. Everyone he met is in the mafia!

Vito is the head of the Graziosi crime family, Johnny just finished eight years in Sing Sing for loansharking, Vinnie did twenty years for double murder, and Frank himself was in prison until Gina was eight years old. She loves Michael, but she knows Frank and the rest of his mafioso brethren will be involved in their daily lives and might corrupt Michael, but Michael refuses to leave her because his love for her is too strong. Though he doesn’t know how clever they are in finding ways into their lives, Michael argues that since Gina does, she can help him avoid the possibility. Finally, she relents and agrees to marry him. At the engagement party, Michael and Gina are forced into conversation with Uncle Vito. Though Michael gets off to an awkward start with him, he’s able to recover. Gina also turns down an offer from Vito to get her transferred to a safer school. Vito takes them all to see the painting Johnny did of Jesus Christ killing some guy with a machine gun, and they all lie and tell Vito it’s awesome. Vito tries to bring up an offer for Michael, but he respectfully declines. The next day at work, Michael meets an old woman who’s a novice when it comes to buying art. She seems cool, so Michael offers to signal to her during the auction if there’s a really nice painting that’s going for less than what it’s really worth. He allows Helen to work out the details with her. Once Helen shows up, she lets Michael know the delivery trucks are actually early this time. Surprised, he goes out and checks the delivery and sees that every single piece is there. The guy who was an asshole to him earlier even apologizes to him.

Wait a minute…somebody got to him…

In Michael’s office, Philip comes to him with a plan of having Michael work with Morganson. Then, he’ll come in to hopefully secure the deal. Michael walks with Morganson and goes through this refined speech about how the Cromwell auction house is all about respectability and class and when he takes him to his office, he opens the door to see Johnny’s horrible painting staring back at them. Quickly, he closes the door and sends Morganson in Philip’s direction. Michael calls Frank, wondering the audacity of Vito wanting him to auction it for $50,000 because no one in their right fucking mind would buy it. Frank brings up the fact that his delivery trucks showed up on time and all he has to do is return the favor. As they argue, Gina shows up to Michael’s office and takes the phone from him to talk to Frank. To try and dissuade her from looking in the direction of the painting (because she’ll then assume Michael has been corrupted by her family), he does virtually anything to try and distract her as she talks on the phone, including dancing in his underwear. Once he does this, Philip walks in with Morganson, repeating the same speech to him Michael was doing earlier. Following their exit, Gina gives the phone back to Michael, and Frank tells him if he doesn’t put the painting up for auction, it won’t be good for Michael or him. The good news is that if he does it, Frank will talk to Vito about Michael and Gina wanting to go at it alone. As Michael agrees, we see Frank torturing some guy that owes him money by handcuffing him to a treadmill and setting it to “mountain climb”.

At the auction, the old lady is there, and Helen clues him in on the signals she worked out with her. At the same time, Vito, Johnny, and a couple of his boys enter the auction house to watch. He does the Jesus painting last, and someone actually bids on it. Turns out, it’s some guy that was clearly beaten down beforehand, with Vinnie sitting right next to him and forcing him to bid.

Thankfully, the old lady walked out with nothing.

Afterwards, Philip is cool with Michael “sneaking” in the painting because it made money, and Vito thanks Michael personally. Later, Michael calls Frank to tell him the painting sold (because he’s unaware of the guy being forced) and asks if everything is square with Vito now. Frank tells him “It’s going to be okay”.

That’s not what he wants to hear.

Michael’s taxi is in traffic, and he asks the worker on the street what happened. The guy tells him some place called Sotheby’s burned down. Back in his office, he finds a matchbox from Sotheby’s on his desk. He opens it, and it has the message “Complimenti V.”. Immediately after, Helen interrupts to tell him the FBI would like a word with him. Well, it looks like Michael is screwed and this mafia stuff is only going to get him in deeper shit.

My Thoughts:

The idea of an innocent Englishman marrying into a mob family is a very funny idea, and we get a lot of amusing moments delivering on this premise. The annoying part is that Mickey Blue Eyes seems to be cool with just scratching the surface of its potential. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. For a movie about mob violence, murder, and whatever else, it’s a pretty harmless romantic comedy that never takes itself too seriously, though this is arguably the problem.

In his element is Hugh Grant. He makes even the most uneventful romantic comedy watchable with his natural charisma, charm, and comedic sensibilities. Inserting someone like Grant into a movie like this automatically upgrades it. Here, he plays the relatively unsmooth but loving man who is head over heels in love with Gina. Despite learning her entire extended family is involved regularly in mob dealings and the fact he’s only been dating her for three months, he’s still willing to risk it all to be with the woman he loves. By use of his trademark expressions and natural reactions to crazy situations (including having to bury a dead body at one point), Grant makes the comedic scenes work to the best of his ability (him trying to work the squibs was gold). A lot of it is chuckle-worthy, but it’s just not as funny as it should be.

It depends how you feel that day, but you could argue a positive of Mickey Blue Eyes is how lightly they take certain subjects. For example, when Michael and Frank have to take a dead body and bury it and cover it up, so no one gets in trouble, it’s a very dark moment on paper. However, in the movie it has this feeling of a screwball type of humor, and you don’t think for a second how morbid the action is. It’s not meant to be taken seriously, it’s just a regular hurdle for our characters to work through, and it translated to the audience well. Seeing Michael trying to maintain his humanity and innocence while also being involved deeper than Gina is because of his general buffoonery is a lot of fun. Grant does the usual of finding himself in hard-to-explain situation after hard-to-explain situation, being a part of every good gag in the movie. Nonetheless, the film is okay with being nothing more than “pretty good” when they could’ve pushed further. Even then, there are still a number of scenes that are memorable and goofy enough to keep you entertained throughout the runtime such as the Chinese restaurant scene, Michael’s inability to do a New York/Italian accent or the slang of a mafioso but having to act like he’s some gangster named “Kansas City Little Big Mickey Blue Eyes”, the restaurant scene where Michael has to conceal his gun, and the fiasco with the outrageous paintings Johnny made.

Also, no matter how you feel about the movie, there’s no way you don’t laugh at the cringe-inducing fixing of the second auction where Michael accidentally signals the old lady to bid and then tries to retract it (and looking like a crazy person at the same time). The movie is essentially Hugh Grant being forced into mob hijinks and this may be reason enough to check this one out for a date night.

Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Gina wasn’t given much to do to show off her personality. Despite Gina’s situation being the reason for the plot advancing to where it goes, she takes a backseat to everything Grant and James Caan do. I don’t hate it because I’m a fan of both men, but Gina as a character left a lot to be desired. You could predict pretty much everything that was going to happen to her from the start. They get engaged with the idea Michael won’t be corrupted, there’s a misunderstanding and Gina thinks Michael lied to her, and everything is cleared up by the end. Essentially, this is it for Gina. Regarding the misunderstanding about the picture, it was a weird way to end the movie because it felt so inconsequential after everything that happens. Out loud, I was like, “Oh my God. Are you still on this? Who cares?!”.

I can’t even think of a scene where she does something funny without Grant being involved.

The supporting characters were solid though. Paul Lazar’s Ritchie was underused. He only has a handful of lines, but I thought he was hilarious. Scott Thompson’s all-over-the-place FBI agent was also notable. I almost wished him and his partner were either introduced earlier or included more in general. James Caan was a good choice to play the loving father in Frank though. They could’ve gone the easy route by having him be the main mob boss everyone’s afraid of, but I feel like we’ve seen versions of this before. Here, everyone’s scared shitless of Uncle Vito, with Burt Young choosing to go the quiet, but menacing way, in portraying the character and it works. This gives us an interesting dynamic for Frank because he has loyalty to his daughter and is cool with Michael, but he has to adhere to Vito, with the potential of death looming around the corner if he refuses any job from him.

Mickey Blue Eyes contains a lot of intriguing ideas and plays with a lot of potential subplots and characters that could make the film something much bigger and more developed. Sadly, it felt like the writers were perfectly content with making an above average romantic comedy that doesn’t push any further than the status quo, teetering the line only a few times. For instance, Frank’s idea of stuffing the $100 bill in the body to make it seem like it was an act of the Risoli crime family should’ve upped the ante tenfold. Why not go for it? I’m not saying they have to push all the boundaries and strive for chaos, but am I wrong in saying this could’ve been much more?

Mickey Blue Eyes is a romantic comedy with a mafia flavor, giving us a lot of fun moments for Hugh Grant and James Caan to entertain us in. Alas, it’s not much more than that.