Mickey Blue Eyes movie review (1999)

Michael blunders ahead anyway. He meets her dad (James Caan), who runs a restaurant where the customers all seem supplied by Central Casting, Gangster Division. The inimitable Joe Viterelli, who was so funny as the bodyguard in "Analyze This," is even on hand. Michael's slow to catch on: "Your dad is some kind of mob caterer?" And he asks the wrong questions for the right reasons ("Are you mostly family?"). But before she realizes what's happening, her dad has taken a liking to Michael, and the wedding is on.

Complications. The big boss (nicely played by Burt Young) doesn't know the real story. There are misunderstandings. Michael has to pose as a mobster to save his life. He gets lessons in pronunciation, to learn to talk like a gangster, and these scenes are so badly handled by Grant that the movie derails and never recovers. Either he can't do a plausible mob accent, or he thought it wasn't called for. The squawks and gurgles he produces, both during the lessons and later, are so strangled and peculiar that we wonder why the other actors don't just break off and wait for the next take.

Grant is wrong for the role anyway. He has a good line in charm and wit, he can play intelligent and vulnerable, and he's likable. But there's never a moment here where he convinces us that he's truly desperate or in danger. He drops into the movie like a dinner guest; we're reminded of somebody unflappable like David Niven, although Niven could play desperate when he had to.

Jeanne Tripplehorn is sufficiently convincing as the woman who loves him, although it must have seemed odd to her, being so intense in the face of his cool. Caan and Young are right at home (Young's thin lips releasing each word grudgingly), and Viterelli is a mountain of plausibility. But without a strong center, there's not enough for them to play against.

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