Force Fed Films: Mickey Blue Eyes

I think Puneet pulled a fast one on me today. A person at our work has been hounding us to watch Mickey Blue Eyes, so in an effort to shut him up, Puneet assigned the movie to me today as a Force Fed Film. Well whatever, there was never a rule that we've had to see the movie we make the other watch. One thing I can say right off the bat, Mickey Blue Eyes is a really odd combination of genres. It's a crime movie, as well as a romantic comedy. I'm not sure what to think of that, but hit the jump to see if it worked out in the end.


We start with Michael Felgate, played by the always charming Hugh Grant, who proposes to his girlfriend Gina after only knowing her for a few months. Surprise surprise, he hasn't met her family yet and it turns out they're all mobsters. Michael works at an auction house selling paintings, and the mob starts using it as a way to launder money by selling paintings that a son has made and forcing the people who owe them money to buy them. Gina starts getting upset that he's becoming "one of the guys" and a whole mess starts up of trying to hide the dealings he's forced into by the mob from Gina and stay alive.

So the big question is did it work? Nope. This movie just doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. One moment we'll have a funny scene in which Michael is trying to hide his British accent from the other mobsters, and the next it's a pretty serious crime movie about murder and the mob out to get him. Then throw in a romance between two characters that seemed to have no actual chemistry and you've got a real stinker on your hands.

Should I think these mobsters are goofy, or intimidating? Who knows.

It's not like the characters or the acting was terrible, it was just very stereotypical and plain. When they want to be funny, they're kinda funny. And when they want to be serious, they're pretty serious. The comedy was alright, and they mock all the stereotypes of crime and mob movies pretty regularly. The crime mob stuff was ok too, it was just the mix of the two really didn't work. Going back and forth I never got the feeling if I should think these characters were funny, or if I'm supposed to be afraid of/for them. I certainly never ended up caring for any of the characters or what happened to them. It's hard to get serious in a life and death situation when the whole movie has been convincing you to not take anything seriously.

Overall I felt it was a very average movie that had identity issues. I really wouldn't recommend this to anyone as it just seems like you could spend your time better doing pretty much anything else. The jabs they take at other mob movies were ok, but other than that Mickey Blue Eyes doesn't have much else to offer.