The mafia is not immortal Harold Ramis, who in the past shot a great romantic comedy “Groundhog Day”, this time decided to turn to eccentric comedy. Called the star of the first magnitude Robert De Niro, an actor of a caliber smaller than Billy Crystal, who recently only engaged in the voice of characters from animated films. And so they decided to make this film, which refutes the phrase: “the Mafia is immortal”, and everything else on the same subject.
Paul Viti is an influential New York mobster on the verge of a nervous breakdown. All gangsters in shock: how to help your crazy boss? Ben Sobol is an ordinary psychoanalyst. One day, he accidentally crashed into the car of one of Viti's subordinates. Now he has only a few days to help the godfather cope with depression.
As I said before, the film genre I would call an eccentric comedy. The standard of this genre, I still consider the film “Nine Yards”, which was released only a year after this film. After all, the killer neighbor is cooler than the crazy mobster. And it's not just that. What distinguishes an eccentric comedy from all other comedies is that there are so many silly moments in it, but they are nevertheless very funny. And how unusual it was to look at the sobbing Robert De Niro, whom I always imagined either as Vito Corleone or Lamota, and in the same comedy film “Meet the Parents”, he played, albeit a little seriously, but so funny. But in this film, I was not particularly excited by his image. Of course, he was the main star here, and everything revolved around him, and he played well, as always, with his signature smile, but, simply, I did not like his image. It's the mafia. I had completely different stereotypes about her, but not the same. Incidentally, the plot is not bad enough. It's not quite jammed yet, but it's banal in some places. But, nevertheless, the picture does not spoil much. Although, we could still do something original, or we ran into one storyline and let’s chase it.
In general, a rather high-quality eccentric comedy, with De Niro well played, and proving that the mafia is not as cold-blooded and immortal as it is painted.
Original