After her teenage son leaves for college, she catches her husband cheating on her, and her boss thinks of firing her, Kristin has enough and accepts the offer of becoming the new mafia boss in Italy after hearing that her grandfather was assassinated there. Having bodyguards, like Fabrizio, and secretary Bianca guiding her in this new criminal business, Kristin still has time for an affair with an Italian man, Lorenzo. As she was negotiating with the Romano family, Kristin and other mafia criminals are arrested, and it turns out Lorenzo was an undercover agent all along. Fabrizio attempts to kill Kristin's family and take over, but dies in the process. Kristin retires from the mafia.
Neat idea, underwritten screenplay—"Mafia Mamma" is a thin comedy, but it has one great feature: excellent and underrated actress Toni Collette, who acts with such enthusiasm in every scene as if she thinks she is in a great movie. Unfortunately, the whole movie is below her, rarely managing to conjure up some inspiration, wit or hilarity. One rare example of a good joke is when Kristin and her friend Jenny are working out in the gym, and Jenny orders her to shout a mantra, "Eat, Pray, F***", many women in the gym join her chant, but as Kristin hesitates, Jenny orders her to be louder: "From the vagina!" Another good gag is when the bodyguards insult Kristin's ex-husband by calling him "stronzo", who protests: "How dare you call me something I don't even know what it means!" Yet the distance between good jokes is far, leaving a solid, but meagre comedy on 'autopilot', since the storyline unravels as if anyone could have written it, without much surprises or higher lift-offs. Three violent-bloody sequences stand out (in one, Kristin kills a mobster with the sharp end of her high heel hitting his head) since they feel somewhat uneven. Wacky and weird, but only for fans of Italian mafia stories.
Grade:+
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