MICKEY BLUE EYES (1999)
Starring Hugh Grant, Jeanne Tripplehorn, James Caan, Burt Young, James Fox, Joe Viterelli, Gerry Becker, Maddie Corman and Vincent Pastore.
Screenplay by Adam Scheinman and Robert Kuhn.
Directed by Kelly Makin.
Distributed by Castle Rock Entertainment. 102 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Maybe I’d cut Mickey Blue Eyes more slack if it didn’t come out so hot on the heels of Notting Hill.
After all, Hugh Grant’s latest is a perfectly good little comedy about a British auctioneer who finds out that the woman he wants to marry (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is the daughter of a mob kingpin. To make it more authentic, they brought in Sonny Corleone himself, James Caan.
Grant is very funny as he finds himself being dragged deeper and deeper into la famiglia politics. Tripplehorn is a charming romantic foil. Caan, doing a character he could do in his sleep, is still a lot of fun to watch poking fun of his earlier role. (After this and Marlon Brando in The Freshman and Robert DeNiro in Analyze This, you can bet somewhere in Hollywood someone is trying to set in motion an Al Pacino mob comedy…)
Mickey Blue Eyes makes for a perfectly watchable light farce.
Too bad for this film that with Notting Hill, Grant had set the bar so much higher. (8/99)
Sabrina Stevens
Copyright ©1999 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 20, 1999.