Balanced spoke movie

It’s a small kick, though, more mental than gut-level: “Oh, look,
that’s from `Scarface’ . . . And that nightclub shot is from
`GoodFellas’ . . . And that argument is straight out of `Godfather III’
. . .”

Abrahams spoofed cop shows with “Naked Gun” (as a screenwriter)
and ’70s disaster films with “Airplane.” Muscling into Coppola,
Scorsese and De Palma territory would seem like a natural — but then
you see the movie.

Figuring out why a comedy isn’t funny isn’t an exact
science. It might just be that the jokes aren’t any good — that
would be enough. But it also may be that the whole idea was a
mistake. The Mafia genre is histrionic, operatic and self-conscious
to begin with. Can a satirist really hope to come up with something
more bizarre than Marlon Brando in “The Godfather”?

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Low-key self-importance is the favorite target of satirists.
But there’s virtually nothing low-key in the great Mafia films —
with the exception of Al Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone in
“The Godfather” movies. Now there’s a target, but Abrahams misses
it and thus blows his best comic shot.

He casts Jay Mohr as the Pacino-like Anthony Cortino,
presumably because Mohr can do a decent Pacino impression. But Mohr
is so laid-back that his performance comes across as more homage than
spoof. Unlike Leslie Nielsen in the “Naked Gun” films, Mohr zombies
his way through “Mafia!” as a straight man.

The late Lloyd Bridges, in his last role, has more pep. He
looks frail but handsome and not unwell, and he relishes the absurdi
ty of the Brando parody as Don Vincenzo, head of all the New York
families. (“Now if we’re finished, I’d like to get back to my lovely
stepdaughter’s coronation.”) It’s a good-natured swan song.

In Vegas, “Mafia!” introduces Pamela Gidley as Pepper, a
parody of Sharon Stone’s gold-digging Ginger in Martin Scorsese’s
“Casino.” In Anthony’s hotheaded brother (Billy Burke), “Mafia!”
conflates three “Godfather” roles — Sonny and Fredo Corleone and
Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia).

The ingenuity involved in combining characters and plot
strains is vaguely interesting, and now and then someone will get off
a decent line. In a Shylock-like defense of killers, Anthony tells
his WASPy wife (Christina Applegate), “If you prick a murderer, does
he not leave a blood trail all the way back to his Rockingham
estate?”

But to be honest, “GoodFellas” and “Godfather III” were a
lot funnier, and they were good movies. When a parody’s sources are
funnier than the parody, that’s a problem.