Awful film Mafia Mamma sees Toni Collette as ‘godmother’

Her lazy husband is unfaithful, her colleagues are mansplainers and she hasn’t had sex for three years. Then her life changes.

Toni Collette in a scene from the movie Mafia Mamma.

Mafia Mamma (MA15+)
In cinemas
1.5 stars

It’s been 32 years since Toni Collette made an immediate impression in her first feature film, Spotswood, a Melbourne-based comedy that also starred Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe and Ben Mendelsohn. Since then Collette has enhanced her reputation in a great many films and television series and has almost never given a bad performance.

She’s not bad in Mafia Mamma, a strident crime comedy that she co-produced, but the film isn’t worthy of her.

She plays Kristin, an American wife and mother who isn’t enjoying life very much. Her lazy husband (Tim Daish) is unfaithful to her in her own home, the men she works with in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company, condescend to her, her son is leaving for college, and she hasn’t had sex for three years.

Kristin’s life changes suddenly when she gets a call from a woman named Bianca (Monica Bellucci) in Rome; Bianca tells her that the grandfather she has never seen has died (murdered in a bloody massacre as we see in the opening scene, though Bianca doesn’t tell her that) and that she is obliged to attend the funeral.

Encouraged by her best friend, Jenny (Sophia Nomvete), Kristin packs her bags and heads for the airport.

No sooner has she landed in Rome than she literally runs into Lorenzo (Giulio Corso), a handsome local, and senses the opportunity for some erotic interludes. But first she must attend the funeral which is disrupted when gunmen fire on the mourners.

This is when Kristin discovers that she’s inherited not, as she had thought, her grandfather’s wine business but his role as godfather (godmother?) of the Balbano mafia family (a repeated joke is that Kristin has never seen The Godfather.)

Assigned a pair of goofy bodyguards (Alfonso Perugini and Francesco Matroianni), Kristin accidentally poisons Carlo (Giuseppe Zeo), the head of the rival Romano clan, with a glass of lethal limoncello. And that’s just the start: when the Romano’s top killer comes to polish her off while she’s skyping with the guys in the office back home she turns the tables on her assailant by repeatedly stabbing him in the groin with her stiletto heel and then completing the job by ramming the weapon into his eye.

“He had parts of his scrotum in his eye,” remarks one of the Balbano goons in apparent admiration of his new boss’s skills as a killer. At this point I began to lose interest in a film that seems interested in sadistic violence more than it is in genuine comedic thrills. The problem is the screenplay by Michael J. Feldman and Debbie Jhoon, which isn’t nearly as funny as intended, and the direction of Catherine Hardwicke, best known for the Twilight melodramas and who shows little aptitude for comedy.

There are some pertinent comments about the attitude of powerful men towards strong women but they are swamped by the unexciting gun battles and predictable plot twists.

Fortunately Collette is a terrific actor and even when saddled with material as woeful as this she succeeds in rising above it.

Monica Bellucci doesn’t have a great deal to do but does it competently while the Italian settings are an asset.

In the end Mafia Mamma falls between two stools; it’s much too violent to pass muster as a comedy (the MA15+ rating is well earned) and not interesting enough to work as a true mafia thriller.

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The Giants (M)
In selected cinemas
3.5 stars

The title, The Giants, is a bit misleading; the “giants” refer to the magnificent ancient trees that are under threat from logging in Tasmania, but this Australian documentary, directed by Laurence Billiet and Rachel Anthony, is primarily a portrait of environmentalist, activist and politician Bob Brown.

Employing still photographs and some home movies, the film depicts Brown’s early life in Oberon, NSW, where he was born in 1944, and later in nearby Trunkey Creek, where he went to primary school. Filling in details about this early period are useful contributions from Brown’s twin sister.

Brown studied medicine in Sydney and practised as a GP in Canberra before moving to Tasmania.

In 1972 Brown was radicalised when the state Hydro Electric Commission, in the face of massive protests from environmentalists, dammed the Huon and Serpentine Rivers, thus flooding the pristine glacial Lake Pedder. When, four years later, the HEC proposed damming the Gordon River which would have effectively destroyed the beautiful Franklin River, the outcry was nationwide. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society was formed that year and Brown’s courageous and articulate activism encouraged thousands of volunteers and supporters to take action against the bulldozers in order to save the river. Brown supported Bob Hawke’s Labor Party at the 1983 election and Hawke saw to it that the Franklin was saved.

This story has been told more than once in documentaries, but never as potently and as comprehensively as it is here.

Bob Brown rafting the Franklin river for the first time 1976 in a scene from The Giants

The film, which includes contributions from some of Brown’s lifelong friends and fellow environmentalists such as David Suzuki, also deals in some detail with the activist’s political career as leader of the Wilderness Society and then the Greens, the party founded in 1992.

The filmmakers take a frankly adulatory approach to their subject. The Giants doesn’t mention Brown’s inflexibility in 2009 when the Greens sided with the LNP to defeat Kevin Rudd’s emission trading scheme, thus setting back the fight against global warming in this country for a decade.

Nor does it mention Brown’s unwise decision to lead a party of urban activists into manifestly unfriendly territory in Queensland before the 2019 election. But the film does include footage of Brown and Senator Kerry Nettle heckling George W. Bush in parliament, and of Brown’s many arrests.

On a personal level we see Brown with long-time partner, Paul Thomas at their home.

Brown is continuing to lobby against the destruction of the Tarkine rainforest. He has lost none of his passion over the years.

Footage of magnificent old trees followed by devastating shots of cleared forest will be deeply distressing to the audience at which the film is addressed.