This past summer was a record year for box office grosses in the film industry. Between the thoroughly predictable success of Star Wars: Phantom Menace and the completely unpredictable success of Blair Witch Project it's been a good summer for moviemakers. The two films mentioned above probably owe more to their marketing departments than their creative genius, but there were others that were charming (Notting Hill) and/or innovative (The Sixth Sense). Alas, as we reach the end of the summer season, we are left to sift through the wretched refuse that remains. This brings us face to face with Mickey Blue Eyes.Hugh Grant plays the title character, more commonly known as Michael Felgate. Michael is in love with Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Early in the film, he takes her out to dinner where he pops the question--in one of the few truly funny scenes in the movie. He knows she loves him, but she refuses to marry him, and he cannot understand why. He discovers why when he finally meets the family who are really, truly "family". Gina is sure that if they are married, her extended mafioso family will get its hooks into the man she loves and destroy him forever. He convinces her that true love will conquer all, and they decide to marry and beat the odds.Predictably, all is not smooth sailing. Before Michael knows it, and without his consent, he finds himself obligated to the mob. Thoreau once said "possessions are more easily acquired than got rid of". This apparently also applies to mob ties--although mob members appear to be fairly easily dispatched. The movie rather quickly degenerates into a series of sight gags, and a few almost funny scenes when Hugh Grant has to try to speak like one of the boys.Part of the problem here is the genre itself. The mafia/gangster film reached its apex with Coppola's Godfather films in the seventies. The best sign that a particular genre is wearing thin is when most of the films being made are parodies of the genre. Analyze This was much more engaging and original. Watching DeNiro parody the characters that made him a star was fun. Watching Hugh Grant here was just plain painful. James Caan--who was in the Godfather films--plays Gina's mobster father in a role that is flat and lifeless.There are inspired moments here, but they are few and far between. If you're a Hugh Grant fan, see him at his charming best in Notting Hill or rent The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. If you must have a mafia parody, rent Analyze This or check out Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven. If it's move theater popcorn you long for, check out Sixth Sense, one of the more suspenseful and innovative films of the summer. But Mickey Blue Eyes? Fuhgeddaboutit!

I had heard about this film quite a few times, I knew the two leading male stars in it, and I knew it was something do with with a man trying to marry a gangster's daughter, so I decided to give it a go and see what I would think. Basically in New York, English art house auctioneer Michael Felgate (Hugh Grant) proposes to his girlfriend Gina Vitale (Basic Instinct's Jeanne Tripplehorn), but she shockingly turns him down, she explains it is because her father Frank Vitale (James Caan) as well as as her cousins and uncles are a crime family of gangsters heavily involved in Mafia activity. She doesn't want him getting sucked into this world, but he assures her this wouldn't happen, but he unknowingly does become part of a money laundering scheme, before they are even officially engaged, the FBI have him in their sights, and soon enough he is being forced into helping the mob with more laundering scams that he is made aware of, once under the given nickname "Mickey Blue Eyes". When one the laundering schemes goes wrong Gina's cousin Johnny Graziosi (John Ventimiglia) assaults Michael, Gina gets mad, grabs his gun and fires a warning shot into the ceiling, but is ricochets and Johnny is accidentally killed, Johnny's father Vito Graziosi (Rocky's Burt Young) threatens to Frank that he will kill Gina unless Michael is killed during the wedding speeches. Frank cannot hurt his daughter, so he confesses to Michael what Vito has ordered, and they turn out the FBI for protection, the authorities make a setup that will see Michael apparently get assassinated in a fake attack at the wedding reception, he is also given a wire to try and record Vito confessing to his activities and crimes in the mob. The plan fails and Vito catches onto the setup, Vinnie D'Agostino (Analyze This's Joe Viterelli) is ordered to kill him, but he accidentally shoots Gina, Vito is arrested while Michael and Frank are in the ambulance mourning over Gina's death, but it was also fake, Vinnie and Gina were part of the FBI's backup plan, and she wanted to teach her groom and father a lesson, in the end Michael and her make up, and Frank is happy for the Englishman to be part of his regular family. Also starring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's James Fox as Philip Cromwell, Gerry Becker as FBI Agent Bob Connell, Maddie Corman as Carol the Photographer, Tony Darrow as Angelo, Paul Lazar as Ritchie Vitale and GoodFellas' Vincent Pastore as Al. Grant does his silly English twit act we have come to expect fine, Caan could have perhaps acted a bit more like the real don of the family but is okay, supporting actors all do their parts alright as well, the film though is a little predictable and perhaps dull, it made me laugh in the right places, like the scene where Grant is trying to get mob lingo and certain scenes in the auction house, but otherwise it's not hilariously funny, so all in all it was a see just once comedy. Okay!

Michael Felgate (Hugh Grant) is an art-house auctioneer who finds that the girl he wants to marry, Gina Vitale {Jeanne Tripplehorn} is the daughter of leading mobster, Frank Vitale {James Caan}. Initially thinking it will be OK if he doesn't do any favours for "the mob," Michael gets deeper and deeper in trouble to the point he not only might lose his girl, but also his life.Amiable and at times funny, Mickey Blue Eyes is the sort of safe comedy fodder to while away an afternoon with. Boasting a fine comic turn from Hugh Grant as the fop out of his depth, and boosted by James Caan kicking back and enjoying the fun, it's a film that could have been much better had it not run out of steam. The mob spoof picture is such a great premise to work from, but the main joke quickly wears thin. Just how long you can run with the normal guy in amongst the mob gag, will probably determine how much you eventually get from Kelly Makin's film. Grant is just about charming enough to keep the film on the decent side of average, and some well staged set pieces really hit the mark. But it's unlikely the ending will leave you anything other than unfulfilled. Mixed for sure, but hardly a crime against comedy. 6/10

"Mickey Blue Eyes" (*1/2 OUT OF ****) is an offer you can refuse.Hugh Grant deserves better than he gets from this atrocious, uninspired Mafia parody produced by his girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley for their production company Simian Films. Directed by Kelly ("National Lampoon's Senior Trip") Makin and written by Adam ("Little Big League") Scheinman and Robert ("The Cure") Kuhn, "Mickey Blue Eyes" flounders as a soggy fish-out-of-water farce about a bumbling Brit (Hugh Grant) at a New York art auction house who proposes to a pretty school teacher (Jeanne Tripplehorn) whose father (James Caan) holds a high ranking position in a sadistic Mafia family. Since "The Godfather" made La Cosa Nostra movies a sure thing with audiences, Hollywood has produced a line up of memorable mob movies. Now that most of the big-time Mafioso are sitting in jail, the appeal of the genre has spiraled.Happily, the success of not only "Analyze This" but also HBO's "The Sopranos" has given Family-oriented entertainment a new lease on life. Sadly, "Mickey Blue Eyes" lacks the hilarity of either "Analyze This" or "The Sopranos." The idea of an innocent entangled with the mob, as Grant's adorably clumsy English auctioneer Michael Felgate becomes, breaks no new ground. Moreover, Michael doesn't get to milk as much comedy from his mafia masquerade as Billy Crystal in "Analyze This." Worse, the mob gags are both too few and far between to get more than an occasional guffaw. The stereotypical treatment of Italian-Americans as pizza-faced gangsters doesn't help. Ultimately, Makin and company cannot spruce up the clichés that have been recycled ad nauseam.The early scenes promise more than the later ones deliver. Sloppy scripting by Scheinman, Kuhn, and an uncredited Hugh Grant sink this comedy in the wet cement that the mob reserves for canaries. Michael makes a living as the manager for Cromwell's Art House in Manhattan, the chief rival of Sotheby's, but Michael's business poses little threat to the giant. Later, he proposes to Gina Vitale (Tripplehorn), but she rejects him. She fears that the family and her father will corrupt Michael. Sure enough, her fears come true as Frank (James Caan) and mobster kingpin Vito Graziosi (Burt Young, trimmer than he ever looked in the "Rocky" movies) use Michael's auction house to launder money. While Michael struggles to keep Gina in the dark about his deals with the don, the FBI shows up to grill him about mob ties.Meanwhile, Vito's hot-headed son Johnny (John Ventimiglia) goes ballistic when Michael cheats him out of a $100 thousand dollars, so that he can stop a misinformed widow with a hearing problem from buying one of Johnny's gory paintings. Johnny tries to whack Michael. Ironically, Johnny's bullet ricochets and kills him. Frank covers up the killing by framing another mob. When the truth emerges, Vito forces Frank to gun down Michael at his wedding reception with Gina. The Scheinman & Kuhn screenplay teems with cretinous characters. How can Michael and Frank overlook Johnny's car, parked as it is in front of Michael's apartment, when they lug off Johnny's corpse to bury it. Vito figures out that Johnny died in Michael's apartment, because his thugs found his son's car parked in front of it. Further, the surprise ending is too implausible and convoluted to be funny.Comedy grows out of incongruity, but "Mickey Blue Eyes" boasts little incongruity. Admittedly, Hugh Grant is at the top of his self-depreciating form. Nobody can match his stammer, his clever witticisms, and appear as fashionably bewildered. Meanwhile, James Caan, famous as Sonny Corelone in "The Godfather," doesn't evoke the same presence as either fellow "Godfather" co-stars Marlon Brando did in "The Freshman" or Al Pacino in "Donnie Brasco." The chemistry between Jeanne Tripplehorn and Hugh Grant never comes to a boil. They have their best moment in a Chinese restaurant when Felgate spikes a fortune cookie with a marriage proposal. The supporting cast is a who's who of Mafia character actors, especially Joe Viterelli who played in "Analyze This.""Mickey Blue Eyes" is not a sure thing.