Not even the fierce wattage of Toni Collette’s talent can light up this hokey crime comedy, a kind of wacky mobster spin on the idea of the unhappy American woman finding herself and learning to love again in a luxury Euro-tourist paradise; Mafia Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, perhaps. It’s directed by Catherine Hardwicke from a story idea by French author and film-maker Amanda Sthers, who gave us Madame – another film into which Collette tried valiantly but unsuccessfully to breathe some life.
Here she plays Kristin, an empty-nester whose son has just gone away to college; she is bored and unfulfilled by her job as a big pharma PR, and her husband turns out to be a cheating slimeball. Then she receives news that her Italian grandfather has just died on his Lazio estate bequeathing her full control of his “winery” business. Intrigued and in need of a change of scene, Kristin hops on the next flight to Italy and even at the airport has a flirtatious encounter with a hunky pasta-maker called Lorenzo (Guilio Corso). But when a shootout breaks out at her grandfather’s funeral, Kristin learns the awful truth: she has inherited a crime family.
Collette’s gift for comedy is always welcome and she sells this movie very hard, like the impeccable professional she is, and it’s a nice enough premise for an undemanding comedy. But frankly Collette is let down by Monica Bellucci’s very torpid and disengaged performance as her late grandfather’s mysterious private secretary, and the woman who looks as if she has been the one really pulling the strings. Bellucci looks as if she is thinking about something else in every scene. It isn’t long before you’re doing the same.
• Mafia Mamma is released on 17 November on Prime Video.
