‘Mafia Mamma’ Review: Toni Collette’s Mob Comedy Misfires
thewrap.comYou never want bad films to happen to great actors, but every once in a while one of your favorites inevitably turns up in an unfortunate and miscalculated clunker.
Sadly, Catherine Hardwicke’s “Mafia Mamma” is that movie for Toni Collette. While she is one of the most fearless and versatile actors working today, Collette looks somewhat lost here as the story’s accidental crime boss on a quest to, well, “Eat Pray F*ck” (as one character in the film so elegantly puts it).Despite having directed a fiercely diverse slate of genre-spanning blockbusters and indies across TV and the big screen—she’s done everything from “Thirteen,” to “Twilight” and “Miss Bala”— even Hardwicke seems a little bewildered in a script jointly penned by Michael J.
Feldman and Debbie Jhoon, based on an original story by Amanda Sthers. Collette plays Kristin, a sunny and frantic Californian with a college-aged son, a dead-end job in pharmaceutical marketing overrun by entitled misogynists and a carefree musician husband who screams insufferable prick with his casual sloppiness and halfway-buttoned shirts the minute you lay eyes on him.
Predictably, the hubby proves to be a sleazy cheater and the boring job becomes too much to take fast. Coming to the rescue is a phone call from Italy.
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