Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This film tried to piggy-back off the success of "Analyze This" with the fish out of water (Hugh Grant) become part of the James Caan's family. The problem is--it just didn't work. The paintings in the film were blasphemous and Italian-Americans are portrayed as morons. I would love to see the same treatment applied to Jews or African-Americans. The fact is no one would have the nerve to do that but Italians are always fair game in Hollywood.The attempt at replicating the success of "Analyze This" failed. Despite the good cast of Caan and Grant, this is one of the worst films I had ever seen.

In 1999, although I didn't actually see this mob spoof, I heard the line, "fuggedaboudit," was told where that line came from, and saw the trailer for the movie. I didn't actually see "Mickey Blue Eyes" until 2006, and by then, I knew it wasn't the most highly acclaimed comedy of all time, so I wasn't expecting to be blown away. However, I was hoping for at least a moderately funny spoof movie, and from what I remember, that was what I got. About 2 ½ years later, I've seen it a second time, and while I was still entertained by a good chunk of the film, it may not have been quite the same as before.Michael Felgate is an art auctioneer from England who currently resides in New York, and is dating a teacher named Gina Vitale. He wants to marry her, but doesn't know about her family! She has relatives, including her father, Frank Vitale, who are members of the Mafia, and this is why she turns down Michael's proposal, as she is afraid that if they marry, he will be lured into the world of organized crime! Michael promises not to let that happen, but this is easier said than done! After they are engaged, Michael finds himself involved in a money laundering, and finds himself questioned by suspicious FBI agents, but he must play along with this scheme in order to survive! It gets worse when Gina accidentally kills the son of a mob boss, and Michael decides to take the blame! The first scene in the film that stands out as really funny to me is the one where the owner of a Chinese restaurant stands at the table where Michael and Gina are sitting, and makes sure Gina eats her fortune cookie. For quite a while, the film goes fairly steadily, sometimes mildly amusing, and sometimes more than that. Another major comic highlight I can't forget is Michael having to pose as a gangster known as "Kansas City Little Big Mickey Blue Eyes" and having to try and speak with a New York Italian accent! The humour is not enough to carry the film, but there is also suspense, which definitely helps. For probably most of the film, it looked like my second viewing would be like my first, but I found that it started to lose its charm towards the end, I'm not sure why, but I was not left fully satisfied. Anyway, I would say this movie certainly doesn't fail miserably as a comedy, but as such, it certainly could have been funnier, though the story and suspense often makes up for that. There are much worse comedies out there, but I can see why "Mickey Blue Eyes" isn't as popular as "Analyze This", a mob spoof which came out the same year.

Hugh Grant is in someways a modern version of a comic actor who I have had problems with in viewing: Charles Butterworth. Butterworth would hem and haw, afraid of making some social faux pas while pursuing whatever business occupied his activities on screen. This diffidence while mildly amusing could get tedious after awhile. Similarly Grant will hesitate, and stammer a bit. But his English manners, and his good looks make his hesitancy far more easy to accept than Butterworth's. Certainly his good looks have made him an easy leading man type (whereas Butterworth always played in supporting roles).MICKEY BLUE EYES gives Grant far more to be nervous and hesitant about. He plays Michael Feldgate, a highly successful auctioneer at a leading house in Manhattan (his boss is Philip Cromwell (James Fox)). Michael has been romancing a schoolteacher named Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and has finally decided to propose to her. Besides causing an unintentional series of uproars in a Chinese restaurant, he is surprised to find Gina less than enthusiastic. After he meets her father Frank Vitale (James Caan) he follows Gina home and learns the reason for Gina's lack of enthusiasm (though not lack of love). Frank is a member of a Mafia family headed by Vito Graziosi (Burt Young), and Gina was always afraid that if Michael and she married he'd be trapped into the Mafia way of life sooner or later.Uneasily Gina agrees to the wedding, with Michael insisting that with her assistance he can avoid any real problems from Graziosi and his gang. But soon the subtlety of the mobsters proves too much for Michael (with or without Gina's help). Graziosi realizes that auctioning art can be useful as a way of laundering dirty mob money (he can have debts paid by having various debtors settle what they owe by buying items the mob puts up at auction). And Michael soon finds he is auctioning art by Graziosi's violent mental case son Johnny (John Ventimiglia) that are setting records - records the F.B.I. are showing great interest in. While worrying about this, Michael is also under pressure of trying to present a good, respectable front for a potentially lucrative client. Somehow the mobsters and the F.B.I. just don't seem to help create this image.Michael finds that everything Gina suggests, or her father Frank tries to help with fails, and soon the Englishman finds he is in the middle of an unwanted killing - one that can set off a mob war. He also finds that he has to parade around town with his erst-while father-in-law as an out-of-town underworld torpedo named "Mickey Blue Eyes" (actually, "Young Mickey Blue Eyes" from Kansas City, as opposed to "Old Mickey Blue Eyes" his dead dad, and the original "Mickey Blue Eyes" from Chicago!). This includes burying a corpse in an overused waste land, and ordering steak in a restaurant where "Mickey" is barely understood talking a version of underworld English, and upsetting customers by his anti-English remarks and his constantly dropping his gun.The cast is wonderful, led by a continually drained Grant who can't find any way out of the deeper and deeper hole he is in, Caan who has found that he has a comfortable niche in the mob - but has somehow lost his daughter's trust, Tripplehorn who finds that she is bloodily closer to the mob than she ever expected or wanted to be, Young who is properly sinister but ruthlessly smart, and Fox who constantly trying to put the best face on the worst situations (like talking to his potential client about respectability, opening a door, and finding Grant shaking his behind in front of his fiancé!). Even that late budding comic "goon" actor Joe Viterelli (who played "Jelly" in the ANALYZE THIS and ANALYZE THAT films) has a nice moment where he watches a television commercial about a very strong adhesive tape that can even bind people's hands - and makes a note for future reference when he needs to bind some person's hands! Until the last comic twists of the plot, the film entertains, and is certainly worth a "10" out of "10" on the scale here.

Is Hugh Grant a good actor? Is he capable of building and portraying a character that we believe in? Does he have depth and breadth in his portfolio? Or is he just lucky because he keeps getting offered the same part to play in return for obscene amounts of financial recompense that are absurdly excessive in relation to the value of his contribution to the the human race and the entertainment of the paying customer? (obviously this phenomenon is not peculiar to Grant alone). Is he any different to ,say, Cary Grant or any of the old time Hollywood matinée idols? In this particular movie he gets his inoffensive-but-just-a-little-bit-stupid Englishman out of the cupboard for another big payday. By now, Grant was big bucks in Hollywoodland and so it didn't really matter what he did. So this whole movie is just a vehicle to take advantage of Grant's celebrity. It came out around the same time as a similar kind of innocent-caught-up-with-the-mob-movie called Analyse This, starring De Niro and Billy Crystal. A far superior film in every way. Probably because of the acting talent of the two main protagonists. Acting talent that Hugh Grant just doesn't have. But then up to now, he hasn't needed any. This movie will probably end up in the cheap DVD bin at your local charity shop, which is where it belongs. Which is a pity in some ways because James Caan puts in his usual good performance. At least he has a great body of work to show his grandchildren, unlike Grant who will probably be forgotten long before he gets any grandchildren. There is just one ray of hope for our floppy haired hero...I hear he's popular in Moscow, or at least Annushka thinks he's a good actor. But then she thinks Garfield is funny too :)