Robert De Niro stars in "The Family," a film that's about as original as its title. The filmmakers couldn't decide if they wanted to go smart or go lunk-headed, so the movie is a mix of these styles - and the result is a bloody mess. Courtesy
When done right, a gangster
comedy with some brains and
some blood can become a black
comedy favorite, along the lines of
“The Freshman” or “Prizzi’s Honor”
or “Get Shorty.” If you haven’t
seen Ben Kingsley in 2007’s “You
Kill Me,” you have a treat in store.
Too many of these mob comedies
go in the direction of camping
up the comedy, which hasn’t been
original since Al Capone’s time,
and they go dopey like the cringeworthy
“My Blue Heaven.”
A new film, “The Family,” is as
original as that title.
We meet a family of four moved
in the Witness Protection Program
to a small town in France. They
frequently move, we learn, because
they and their criminal ways just
don’t fit in with the locals.
Robert De Niro and Michelle
Pfeiffer star as the couple, Giovanni
and Maggie. He’s a mob guy
who snitched years ago on made
men who are still hunting him,
and she’s a tough-chick matriarch,
which is about all the definition
this lame script could manage.
These actors have done this
work before and better, in De
Niro’s “Analyze This” and Pfeiffer’s
excellent “Married to the Mob”
turn. Pair those as a double-feature
and skip “The Family.”
The movie has watchable moments,
nearly all of them stuffed
into the first 15 minutes and the
last 15 minutes, during the setup
and the conclusion.
The 80 minutes in between
nearly put me to sleep — but not
with the fishes — because the
filmmakers couldn’t decide if they
wanted to go smart or go lunkheaded,
so the movie is a mix of
these styles.
The result is messy — bloody
messy, at times.
People are beaten with a baseball
bat (De Niro gets in a Capone
in-joke here, worthy of a snort
toward “The Untouchables”),
clubbed by a tennis racket (by the
teen daughter), blown up (mom
gets in on the action) and punched
bloody by a gang (the son doesn’t
work alone).
It’s difficult to believe that the
action, the tender moments and
the style that writer-director Luc
Besson brought to “Le Femme Nikita”
and “The Professional” could
be so absent here.
But in those movies, he interjected
comedic moments into
pulse-pounding dramas; here he’s
shooting for the funny bone from
the start and misfiring throughout.
Those times when the movie
works usually finds all four family
members together, which is rare in
this film that finds them separated
into far too many subplots.
Dad is stuck at home, writing his
memoirs and having goofy “I’m being
careful” conversations with an
FBI agent (Tommy Lee Jones, who
could only have taken this nothing
role for the French vacation).
Mom is, well, I’m never sure
what she’s doing beyond shopping
for groceries. The daughter (Dianna
Agron, formerly of “Glee”) fares
well in the best subplot, as a young
woman falling in love for the first
time with a French tutor. The
son (John D’Leo) has an amusing
entrepreneurial spirit (running the
mini-gangster rackets at school).
The result is a wildly disjointed
film that lacks in laughs, depth of
meaning and fluid storytelling due
to a loss of chemistry between its
leads. Too many movies this year
are being knocked off by scripts
trying to tell too many stories.
Then there’s the multiple times
we’re sent to the U.S. where
the mob boss finally figures out
Giovanni’s location (these scenes
are the most ripe for editing out).
Perhaps the worst thing you can
say about “The Family” is that it’s
so meaningless that it’s harmless,
and that’s enough to order the film
a concrete coffin.
'THE FAMILY'
Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron
Theaters: Cinemark Tulsa, AMC Southroads 20, Cinemark Broken Arrow, RiverWalk, Starworld 20, Sand Springs, Owasso, Eton Square
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Rated: R (violence, language and brief sexuality)
Quality: (on a scale of zero to four stars)
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