Hugh Grant Disarms The Mob

Jay Carr 

c.1999 The Boston Globe 

MICKEY BLUE EYES 
Directed by: Kelly Makin 
Screenplay by: Adam Scheinman, Robert Kuhn 
Starring: Hugh Grant, James Caan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Burt Young, James Fox, Joe Viterelli 
Running time: 103 minutes 
Rated: PG-13 (brief strong language, some violence and sensuality) 

   In “Mickey Blue Eyes,'' Hugh Grant not only brings off his second comedy hit this summer, but caps his career rehab in the unlikeliest of ways by relocating his bumbling Brit persona from “Notting Hill'' with Julia Roberts to a married-to-the-mob spinoff in Manhattan without her. 
   “Mickey Blue Eyes'' is in the same ballpark as “The Sopranos'' and “Analyze This.'' It brings an enlivening wit to a comedy of culture collision that begins with Grant's East Side art auctioneer proposing marriage to a teacher named Gina, who is also a reluctant mob princess. 
   Part of the wit comes from Grant himself, contributing an uncredited rewrite consisting mostly of ironic asides and rapier-like retorts that amount to the only real weapon the proper Brit has when it comes to dealing with his in-laws-to-be. At first Jeanne Tripplehorn's Gina turns him down, on the grounds that her family will chew him up. Nonsense, he insists, in his most boyishly self-deprecating manner. He can handle it. Besides, Gina's father, a restaurateur in Little Italy who calls his establishment The La Trattoria, likes him, he points out. What can possibly go wrong? 
   In no time, his relatives-to-be are flushing unspeakably awful gangland execution-themed surrealist paintings through the hitherto respectable auction house in a money laundering scheme. The FBI starts leaning on the auctioneer, and the auctioneer is finding it impossible to get his fluted tones around everyday words he needs to learn, like “Fuggedaboudit!'' If the last echoes “Donnie Brasco,'' it's intentional, right down to the casting of a mob soldier with a physical resemblance to Al Pacino. There's no way “Mickey Blue Eyes'' isn't going to be genre-referential, and the movie wisely not only accepts this, but embraces it to accelerate the laughs. 
   James Caan, in a drolly tacky maroon suit that has '70s written all over it and a take-charge manner that falls a little short of really taking charge of anything, of course resonates with his “Godfather'' role. The obligatory “GoodFellas'' reference involves Caan and a corpse in the trunk of a car, but it's a crowded trunk, stuffed with stolen Cuisinarts. The film's title comes from a scene in which Caan tries to pass Grant off as a Kansas City hit man nicknamed Mickey Blue Eyes. Caan doesn't have to work very hard in it because Grant is so funny trying to unsuccessfully get his perfect diction around mobspeak. 
   Tripplehorn is given little to do beyond emit distress signals, but she does so engagingly and, by the end, in savvy ways when she's wised up to the auctioneer's disastrous attempts to ingratiate himself with her family. Burt Young skillfully gets the job done as Uncle Vito, the one everybody is afraid of. Joe Vitelli, the beefy henchman Billy Crystal slapped around in “Analyze This,'' is another plus, but then more than a few of the smaller roles are flavorfully performed - always a good sign. That's another reason ``Mickey Blue Eyes'' is cleverly able to have it both ways. It wrings one more entertainment out of Mafia mythology and finds a few new ways to play it for laughs, starting with Grant's funny cluelessness. 
   Don't fuggeddaboud this one.