Kristin has always been about family.
Sure, that family has taken its shots as of late. Her beloved son, Dominick, is off to college in faraway Oregon. Her husband, Paul, is cheating on her. Still, what is Kristin if not a mother? If not a wife? If not a dutiful pharmaceutical marketer?
A … mob boss?
No. No, no, no. Kristin is definitely not a Mafia donna. She bakes muffins! She rescues bugs! Why, she’s never even seen The Godfather!
She doesn’t care who her grandfather was. She barely knew the man, after all. Is it any concern of hers that said grandfather, the notorious Don Giuseppe Balbano, was gunned down in the streets of Rome and left to chill on the pavement? Or that the bloodbath (which also killed a rival don) threatens to tear Italy’s underworld apart? Certainly not.
Why, Kristin was the most surprised person in the room when she was told that Don Giuseppe willed his criminal empire to her. (Well, maybe the second-most surprised person. Presumed heir Fabrizio was pretty shocked.) She’d flown to Italy simply to attend her grandpa’s funeral (even though she barely knew him), eat some pasta and perhaps have a meaningless fling while she decides what to do about her no-good, cheating spouse.
But Bianca, the late Giuseppe’s capable assistant, insists that only Kristin can bring peace to Italy’s warring crime families. Just one teensy meeting, Bianca promises, and Kristin can call it a day.
And finally, as Kristin and Bianca trample on grapes at the Balbano winery, Kristin agrees. Just one little meeting with one little crime boss. What could be the harm? That boss wouldn’t try to kill her or anything, would he?
Besides, it’s the least Kristin can do. She’s all about family.
Kristin is a good person. She says so herself—again and again and again. And, indeed, several people laud her good qualities. She greets a waitress by name, for instance. She makes trail mix for her son. She compliments a woman on her bonsai tree. And we know, of course, that complimenting someone on a painstakingly pruned houseplant negates any number of felonies. It’s the law.
Don Giuseppe’s funeral takes place in a Catholic church presided over by sevreal priests. And while the service is respected by the Balbano family’s most vicious rivals (the Romanos), the funeral procession afterward is not. (Gangsters later express a certain satisfaction that Giuseppe’s casket received countless bullets.)
People cross themselves frequently.
Kristin walks in on her husband, Paul, engaged in sex with a much younger woman. We see movement, and Paul is shirtless; but otherwise the couple seems mostly clothed. Kristin is horrified. When Paul tells Kristin that he has an illness—that he needs to have sex all the time—Kristin reminds him that they’ve not had sex for three years. “I mean with a new person,” Paul tells her.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that Kristin’s not in the best mindset when she heads to Italy. Indeed, she goes to the country hoping to have her own affair (or affairs). She’s encouraged by her best friend, and the two (and others) twist the book title Eat, Pray, Love into a more sexually crass chant—one that is repeated throughout the movie.
Kristin meets a man at an airport whom she swoons over. They apparently have a sexual relationship that begins the next day (or so we hear). We don’t see them engaged in anything sexual, but we do see plenty of hazy romantic scenes between the two, and she does spend the night at his place. The two of them sleep on his couch; he’s shirtless, and she’s on top of him.
Kristin goes up to another man’s hotel room in the hope of having sex with him. We see both of them engaged in foreplay, but it goes no further than that. We learn later from one of the man’s other apparent lovers that he screams during lovemaking.
Bianca and Kristin don’t seem to have any attraction to each other, but in one scene Bianca does lay beside Kristin and put her leg over the top of Kristin before, ultimately, straddling the American.
The movie may suggest that a waitress is, in fact, trans. (The person in question speaks with a very manly voice.) A woman is attracted to a guy because of a bullet wound (and subsequent stitches) he received. A man puts Kristin’s finger in his mouth and moistens it, apparently to help slip a family ring on it.
Women sometimes wear cleavage-baring outfits. One man is seen with his pants down, showing his underwear. Jenny and Kristin have a crass conversation about how Kristin should have sex while in Italy. Fabrizio dismissively tells Kristin that she dresses like a “librarian,” and not a librarian from a porno. We hear some double entendres. Back home, Kristin’s workmates—all male—try to market the drugs using both sex and sexism. (We glimpse several pictures of swimsuit-wearing men and women, all young, riding jet skis.)
We hear references to body parts, masturbation, erectile dysfunction and a poisoned penis.
Kristin gets attacked by someone who intends to rape and kill her. But she fights back, slamming her shoe’s stiletto heel repeatedly into his crotch and, ultimately, into both eyes. She pushes the 3-to-4-inch heel deeply into the skull, killing her assailant. We see blood ooze out of one of the now-vacant eye sockets and the eye rolling along the floor. Later, we hear that bits of the man’s scrotum were discovered in those same sockets.
A man accidentally poisons himself and dies. Another man falls into a wine-mixing machine that uses a massive metal corkscrew: We hear some horrific noises, both from the man and machine, as the guy dies. Corpses litter a small street, most of the bodies lying in small pools of their own blood. (A woman kisses one of the dead men affectionately before walking through the mess.)
Body parts come off with disturbing alacrity. Often, the folks who wind up missing said parts are already dead. One corpse has his hand sawn off and placed on a silver platter. Another corpse is dismembered in a hotel bathtub. (We see blood on the walls and one henchman carries a disembodied foot.) But this is not always the case: The man killed in the winemaking machine is presumably chopped up as he dies, and one of his fingers is placed in a full bottle of rosé wine as a message. Someone has his fingers blasted off in a gun battle; we see the digits flying, and one appendage lodges in someone’s hair. We learn that someone lost a limb in a traffic accident years before—and see the artificial limb.
Several people are shot in various shootouts. (Some brag and show off their injuries afterward.) Other melees take place off camera, where we hear the report of guns but don’t see any actual gunfire. Kristin’s bodyguards offer to dispatch her husband for her: She seems to consider it. Kristin and Jenny take a self-defense course, and the two spar. (The course is limited to women, and they’re encouraged to go for the crotch and eyes.) Someone slaps Kristin across the face. We hear about various Mafia hits.
We hear more than 45 uses of the f-word and nearly a dozen of the s-word. We also hear a mob of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—” and variations of “d-ck.” We also hear some Italian crudities. God’s name is misused more than 25 times (twice paired with “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused once.
Kristin is first told that her crime-boss grandfather was merely a vintner. The quality of wine proves, however, that his wine business was only a front. Kristin works hard for months to improve the wine’s quality; we see her and others engaged in several tastings.
A man encourages Kristin to drink the Italian liqueur limoncello as part of foreplay. Kristin and others drink wine often at dinner, and she guzzles a huge glass of wine to get over a shock.
Someone smokes a cigarette. We hear that the Balbano crime family deals drugs. Legitimate pharmaceuticals come into play as well.
A panicked Kristin vomits all over her phone. She and others talk about the need to urinate.
The Balbanos are involved not just with the drug trade, but with counterfeiting and gambling, too. Kristin is bummed to learn that the family isn’t involved in anything that isn’t either illegal or immoral. Characters spit at the mention of rival families—and someone spits in someone else’s face as well. We hear a couple of references to flatulence.
Mafia Mamma poses as something of a feminist fantasy: An unappreciated wife and mother discovers the joys of organized crime and, in turn, discovers herself. Spearheaded by the versatile Toni Collette, it feels a little like a Pink Panther flick—only from the other side of the criminal ledger. A nice, naïve woman becomes a crime boss and … outlandishly succeeds. It has a wacky slapstick vibe with it, which can make it feel curiously innocent at times.
But it’s not. Boy, it’s not.
We often say in this space some variation of, “Man, too bad about all the unnecessary content, because otherwise this might have been a worthwhile watch for families” or something like that. Well, I’m not sure if this would ever be a worthwhile watch—the plot feels just a little too stilted and thin for that—but the movie’s R-rated content doesn’t do Mafia Mamma any favors. Indeed, that content often feels wildly out of place, given the movie’s silly vibe.
Not sure if anyone’s ever been hankering for a rape scene played for laughs that culminates in a stiletto being jammed into someone’s skull. Or for a movie that presents both marriage and divorce as vaguely annoying inconveniences. Or so many f-words.
You could say that Mafia Mamma is an offer you might want to refuse.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
