Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mafia Mamma’ on Showtime and Paramount+, a Deadly-Dumb Farce That Drags Toni Collette Down With It

Mafia Mamma (now on Showtime and Paramount+, in addition to streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is one of those movie titles that’s like the KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign on your crotchety neighbor’s lawn: Everything says to stay away, but it also stirs up the morbid temptation to stomp all over it just to see what happens. Toni Collette, an absolutely endearing gem of an actor, headlines this comedy, playing a dumb American who learns she’s heir to an Italian “legitimate business.” Feel free to chant the titles Hereditary, The Sixth Sense and Knives Out as an incantation against lousy movies with contrived, cheeseball premises, just like this one, and as a reminder that every star takes a paycheck gig now and then. Mamma is directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who’s a long way from Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen and maybe even Twilight, but close to attaining notoriety for making one of 2023’s biggest misfires.   

MAFIA MAMMA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: ITALY – THE CALABRIAN REGION: Blood fills the cracks in the piazza. Dead bodies everywhere. A pair of high heels walks through the carnage. The Don of the Balbano family is no more. A woman’s voice says, “This means war.” CUT TO: KRISTIN’S SUBURBAN AMERICAN KITCHEN. Brownies, fresh out of the oven. Kristin (Collette) is our protagonist. She cries as she drives a knife through the soft chocolatey goodness. Her phone rings, and she ignores it. Her son is leaving for college. You know the scene – three backpacks on the kid and a guitar in his hand and his mom is weeping and can’t stop hugging him and his friends are in the overstuffed car saying hey let’s go. Transitions. They’re tough. And it’s about to get tougher. Kristin’s job – she’s in pharma marketing and her boss is a sexist shitheel. As for her husband? “He’s in a band,” she says, and the reply is, “I’m sorry to hear that,” and that explains it all. She comes home one day and finds the manchild shtoinking a young guidance counselor. We’ve got ourselves a midlife crisis in full bloom here.

What about that phone call, you’re probably asking. I’m just getting there: It’s from the this-means-war woman, Bianca (Monica Bellucci). We know she’s In The Mob but Kristin doesn’t. Bianca represents Kristin’s estranged grandfather, calling with the news that he’s dead and Kristin has to fly to Italy right now to settle the estate. Well, shit. Kristin resists at first, because why would she want to leave the miserable rut she’s in with the empty nest and turdy husband and crappo job? She’s in a self-defense class that involves yelling CROTCH! EYE! CROTCH! EYE! repeatedly while punching a punching bag, and her spunky bestie Jenny (Sophia Nomvete) convinces her that a trip to Italy is the perfect opportunity for Kristin to get her “eat-pray-f—” on, and before you know it, the whole class is yelling EAT! PRAY! F—! EAT! PRAY! F—! repeatedly while punching a punching bag. “Louder!” Jenny bellows. “From the vagina!”

So Kristin lands in Italy, a naif just waiting to find herself in an untenable situation that, inevitably in movies like this, our protagonist finds increasingly tenable because there’s a lot more to her than being a ditzy chattering suburban American doofus. Right off the plane, she’s charmed by handsome younger fella Lorenzo (Giulio Corso), who makes pasta, because in Italy, one is employed either in the wine business, the pasta business, or the drugs-guns-and-stolen-goods business. Then she’s whisked off to her grandfather’s estate, where she looks around at all the heavily armed and tattooed thugs and gets a load of the fancy digs and actually thinks the guy was a vintner. Her grandfather’s funeral quickly erupts into a TOTALLY HILARIOUS shootout, and the gig’s up: Organized crime is going on around here, boy howdy! And hey guess what, Bianca informs Kristin that she, being the only living heir, is now head of the Balbano family, and her first task as Donna Balbano is to negotiate a ceasefire before the gang war gets out of hand. So Kristin finds a restaurant with to-die-for gnocchi on Trip Advisor and sets up the meeting. Sounds foolproof! And of course, before you know it, Kristin is grabbing her stiletto heel and Single White Female-ing a would-be assassin right in the CROTCH! EYE! CROTCH! EYE! Which is too bad, because she was hoping to do the EAT! PRAY! F—! stuff first.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mafia Mamma has all the broad-comedy strokes of 25-to-40-year-old moronic Hollywood crud – think the mafia spoofery of Analyze This crossed with the fish-out-of-water junk of, I dunno, Crocodile Dundee or something. Oh, and the title card shamelessly rips off Quentin Tarantino.

Performance Worth Watching: Dim the lights, light some candles and repeat: Hereditary, The Sixth Sense, Knives Out. Hereditary, The Sixth Sense, Knives Out. Hereditary, The Sixth Sense, Knives Out. Hereditary, The Sixth Sense, Knives Out. (Feel free to throw in Nightmare Alley, Muriel’s Wedding or I’m Thinking of Ending Things to bolster your necromantic hoodoo.)

Memorable Dialogue: Collette is asked to deliver the following line with gusto, and it’s a prime example of the putrescent dialogue this movie thinks is funny: “Your pasta… it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond a little light foreplay.

Our Take: Mafia Mamma makes fingernails on a chalkboard sound like Barry White. When it’s not inundating us with moldy comedy, it’s filling the screen with enough gore to nip at the heels of The Evil Dead. I think buying Kristin’s well-worn doormat-no-more character arc within the Cosa-Nostra-via-Betty-Crocker scenario requires accepting the film as satire – although satire needs to be razor-sharp to be effective, and this movie is dull, desperate mush, as tasteless as it is pointless. 

The film’s biggest problem? There’s no character for Collette to play, so she fills the space with exuberant overcompensation, and Hardwicke never tells her to chill. Kristin is a bundle of affectations given a pile of double-entendres to recite. She chatters and blabbers endlessly, annoying everyone in earshot, from impatient mobsters to cringing movie-watchers, utterly clueless that her behavior might get her killed by the former, or send the latter screaming from the room. Which isn’t to say Collette’s performance is miscalculated. No, it’s pitch-perfect with the tone of the movie as a whole, whether Kristin’s telling anyone who’ll listen that she hasn’t had sex in three years, or standing by while her mafioso bodyguards dismember a body in the bathtub. The juxtaposition of banality and extreme violence is supposed to be humorous, but it’s merely shrill and miscalculated, an attempt at farce that’s farcical in itself. 

Our Call: Mafia Mamma stinks. Don’t sit there and watch Collette’s goodwill erode in front of your very eyes. SKIP IT, and skip it good.  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.