Mickey Blue Eyes

I went in to see Mickey Blue Eyes with the highest of expectations. The coming attractions looked good, and the movie features Hugh Grant, fresh off his early summer success in Notting Hill.

Reality, unfortunately, sets in for this film at about the one hour point. After a funny opening setup, the movie quickly sinks in the river as though weighted down with cement shoes.

Grant plays Michael Felgate, a stammering Englishman who runs a Sotheby-like auction house in Manhattan. He proposes to school teacher Gina Vitale (Jeanne Tripplehorn) in a Chinese restaurant, but she turns him down. It turns out that Gina’s restaurateur father, Frank (James Caan), is a mobster with ties to organized crime.

Frank takes to Michael like clam sauce to linguine. We’ve already seen this recently with Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal in Analyze This. The stereotyped mafioso characters all appear, including a repeat performance by Joe Viterelli, who was so good in Analyze This. Playing Vinnie, this time Viterelli is shunted to the background.

Michael gets mixed up with the goombahs and Goodfellas. They conveniently use his auction house for money laundering, catching the attention of the FBI. When the son of a local crime boss (Burt Young) is accidentally shot and killed by Gina, Frank has to protect his prospective son-in-law by having him pose as "Little Mickey Blue Eyes" from Kansas City.

Frank teaches Michael how to speak gangster-style, with phrases like "Fergitaboutit." Funny stuff, but at this point, the cream filling in the cannoli begins to sour. Things begin to unravel before the wedding. The ending is forced and contrived, as though the writers didn’t know how to bring it to a conclusion.

The verdict on Mickey Blue Eyes: Fergitaboutit.