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Mickey Blue Eyes

1999, Movie, PG-13, 102 mins

Mickey Blue Eyes: Review

A sophisticated Englishman marrying into a Mafia crime family is hardly a promising premise, but cast the undeniably appealing Hugh Grant in the lead, and you've got something that works — for a while. Michael Felgate (Grant) is a respectable auctioneer whose charming mixture of urbane humor and suave, on-the-block patter puts expensive works of art into the homes of wealthy New Yorkers. His lovely girlfriend Gina (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is a princess — a mafia princess, actually — with a doting father, Frank (James Caan), and a family tree heavy with felons, murderers and other assorted wiseguys. Michael assures Gina that he doesn't care and wants to get married, but soon after meeting Frank and the rest of the "family," Michael starts to worry: Those surly truckers who never could deliver the art on time are suddenly punctual and sincerely apologetic, and there's a highly suspicious fire at Sotheby's. In exchange for this sudden good luck, Michael finds himself laundering mob money, burying a dead body in Queens and impersonating a mobster from Kansas City known as Little Big Mickey Blue Eyes. The film has fun lampooning gangster-movie cliches — Caan wears Sonny Corleone's brown pin-stripe suit and later tries to teach Michael to wrap his stiff upper lip around "fuhgedaboudit" — and Grant is fine in a tailor-made part: He flashes his toothy grin and bats his baby blues, and his place on the podium gives him an opportunity to repeat his star turn on the FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL dais. But what begins as an entertainingly contrived lark soon feels like a poorly plotted muddle, and not even Grant can save his own vehicle. It takes far too long to work itself out, and by then you've had ample time to become irritated with the whole thing. leave a comment --Ken Fox