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Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
Just imagine you're a suave, proper British auctioneer who's
madly in love with an exuberant New York schoolteacher you've known
for only three months, so in love, in fact, that you propose marriage
- only to have her burst into tears and run away. That's what happens
to Hugh Grant at the beginning of the story. Jeanne Tripplehorn
refuses to marry him because she's worried about what will happen if
he joins her dysfunctional Mafia family. Undaunted, he goes to Little
Italy to find her father - that's James Caan - at his restaurant, "The
La Trattoria," where the song "We Are Family" plays in the background
as he meets the wiseguys. Sure enough, before the bumbling Brit knows
it, his auction gallery is being used for mob money laundering and the
FBI is paying a visit. The scene where the gregarious Caan tries to
teach the refined Grant the goombah enunciation of "fuhgeddaboutit" is
a gem. One complication leads to another and soon he becomes known as
"Mickey Blue Eyes" by all the wrong people. Screenwriters Adam
Scheinman and Robert Kuh and director Kelly Makin deliver the
humorous, if cliche-ridden set-ups, but what makes the frenzied farce
work is Hugh Grant, who seems to have inherited Cary Grant's ability
to maintain an unflappable charm and graceful dignity no matter how
humiliating the circumstances. Whether he's a boyish "Notting Hill"
book seller who falls for a movie star or a proper, innocent
Englishman who behaves with aplomb when finds himself with a bloody
corpse, Grant handles his fish-out-of-water roles with witty,
sophisticated charm, adept at both verbal sparring and physical
antics. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Mickey Blue Eyes" is
a funny, funny 8. This engaging romantic comedy is perfectly timed
for late summer laughs.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
