‘Mafia Mamma’: Review

Dir: Catherine Hardwicke. US. 2022. 101mins

A suburban mother at a crossroads reinvents herself in surprising fashion — by becoming a mob boss — in Mafia Mamma, a high-spirited comedy that goes a long way on the strength of Toni Collette’s delightfully daffy performance. It is a shame that director Catherine Hardwicke’s film cannot match its star’s inspired turn, settling for a likeable but strained fish-out-of-water tale in which our unlikely hero discovers that she is the heir to a powerful mafia empire and quickly gets used to calling the shots. Satirising the patronising ’women of a certain age’ escapism of scenic dramas like Eat Pray Love while acknowledging the dilemma women can face once they are pigeonholed as wives and mothers, Mafia Mamma struggles to juggle romance, action and laughs.

Outside of Collette’s energetic comic turn, Mafia Mamma mostly proceeds as one would imagine

Opening in the US on April 14, the picture boasts a fetching premise and winning chemistry between Collette and costar Monica Bellucci. Nonetheless, Mafia Mamma is a modest affair and probably not destined for major grosses — although it does offer plenty of cosy amusements, making it a viable streaming option down the road.

Kristin (Collette) lives in Los Angeles with her ineffectual husband Paul (Tim Daish), despondent that her only child has left for college. She is shocked to learn that Paul is having an affair, and travels to Italy where she connects with her estranged family after the death of her grandfather. Kristin soon realises, however, that she has not just been summoned for the funeral: it was her grandfather’s wish that she take over the family business, which Kristin didn’t realise involved criminal enterprises. With the help of his trusted consiglieri Bianca (Bellucci), the law-abiding Kristin reluctantly accepts this frightening and exciting new role as a mafia queenpin.

Hardwicke, who last directed 2022’s Prisoner’s Daughter, reunites with Collette, one of the stars of her tear-jerking comedy-drama Miss You Already, to deliver a broad comedy that is unashamed to be silly. For better or worse, Mafia Mamma never tries to justify its preposterous premise, instead thrusting the sheltered Kristin into a dangerous situation for which she is utterly unprepared. (In one of the film’s mildly amusing running jokes, Kristin hasn’t even seen the Godfather movies.) But she is going to have to learn on the job as a rival mob family wants to eliminate her clan, leading to attempted murder, bloody showdowns and dismembered bodies.

Rather than grounding the script in something real, Collette provocatively goes in the opposite direction to play Kristin as someone who is constantly reacting in outsized ways to events happening around her. Mad at her husband and hungry for a hookup — she imagines herself as one of those American women in films like Eat Pray Love and Under The Tuscan Sun who meet a dashing European on vacation — Kristin is more interested in romance than in being a mob boss. Collette is very funny articulating her character’s utter cluelessness in dealing with vicious mafia types and, while the film’s sitcom-y unreality can frustrate, Collette’s performance is so controlled in its cheerful eccentricity that the convoluted plotting and lack of believability is not quite as galling. She makes this suburban mother’s growing confidence about thinking for herself — rather than worrying about others’ needs, as she has all her life — a rewarding transformation.

Unfortunately, outside of Collette’s energetic comic turn, Mafia Mamma mostly proceeds as one would imagine. Kristin gets her wish and meets a sensitive local hunk, Lorenzo (Giulio Corso), which allows the character to reconnect with her sexual side after years of feeling rejected by her husband. (Pointedly, Kristin works at a marketing firm where she’s the only woman — and is made to feel old because she’s in her 40s, a demographic her youth-obsessed coworkers want to avoid in their advertising.) But those brief flashes of insight mostly take a backseat to the uninteresting war brewing between the rival mafia families. Whether it’s Alex Heffes’ score, which playfully echoes Nino Rota’s Godfather themes, or a script that pokes gentle fun at mobster tropes, Mafia Mamma’s humour isn’t especially sharp — the jokes tend to be fairly predictable, and the story’s twists are easy to see coming.

As the steely consiglieri, Bellucci is appealingly deadpan opposite Collette’s zanier antics. But the rest of the supporting cast, including Sophia Nomvete as Kristin’s requisite vivacious best friend Jenny, is not as memorable. Collette takes such risks, daring to let Kristin be foolish but also incredibly openhearted and lovable, that what is otherwise fairly pedestrian about Mafia Mamma is even more apparent. Kristin eventually comes out of her shell, but the film keeps hemming Collette in.