Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti!

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Movie
German title Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti!
Original title Jane Austen's Mafia!
Jane Austen's Mafia! Logo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1998
length 83 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jim Abrahams
script Jim Abrahams,
Greg Norberg ,
Michael McManuns
production Peter Agrams ,
Robert L. Levy ,
Bill Badalato
music John Frizzell
camera Peter Letarte
cut Terry Stokes
occupation

Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti! is an American comedy film from the year 1998 by Jim Abrahams with Lloyd Bridges in a leading role. Most of the clothes parody films with Mafia themes (primarily the series The Godfather ) and other feature films that were successful at the time of production.

action

America in the 1960s . Young Mafioso Tony Cortino is seriously injured in a car bomb attack and begins to remember his own career and that of his family.

Talking off-screen, the viewer learns that Tony's father Vincenzo ran errands in his home village in Sicily in 1901 . One day Vincenzo learns that his father is making deals with the local Mafioso Marzoni and is discovered. The boy now has to say goodbye to his mother Sophia and is smuggled out of the village in the bum of a donkey. He flees to America by swimming next to the steamer that he missed, reaching New York at the same time as it, where he meets his future wife during immigration checks.

Several decades later, Vincenzo married and had two children with his wife: the brothers Joey and Anthony. When the younger and weaker son Tony stands up to the acting godfather Don Narducci while earning money , a confrontation ensues, in which Vincenzo intervenes and kills Narducci. Then Vincenzo becomes the new head of the mafia.

A few years later (the plot is back to the 1960s) Vincenzo has become the (successful, but also absent-minded) godfather of an American mafia family , and his son Joey also joined the organization. Only Tony initially took a bourgeois line and made a name for himself in the army through successful war missions.

During the wedding of a family friend, at which everyone is present and Tony introduces his pacifist friend Diane , an assassination attempt on Vincenzo takes place, he survives seriously injured. Tony begins, much to the displeasure of his significant other, to avenge the attack on his father. He succeeds in doing this.

Tony has to move to Las Vegas and successfully runs a casino together with Joey under the patronage of the gangster Cesar Marzoni (although Tony does not know about his past). In the course of this, he also met the stripper Pepper , with whom he soon began an affair. Soon afterwards Vincenzo recovers from the assassination attempt, also due to the presence of his mother Sophia, who is still alive. Shortly afterwards, the godfather celebrates his birthday, on which he solemnly announces his successor: Tony! The older Joey is offended and gives himself up to Pepper, who is hungry for fame. When Tony catches the two of them having an affair, he is devastated. He finally wants to drive away in the car when it explodes (which explains the detonation from the beginning).

However, Tony - badly disfigured, but alive - survived the attack, but in the meantime has to find out that Vincenzo died while playing with Joey's son Chucky . During the godfather's funeral, however, Tony found out who was pulling the strings regarding the attacks: Cesar Marzoni. He had also bribed Chucky for the assassination attempt on Vincenzo. Tony then decides to take revenge and get his life back on the right track. He visits Diane, who has since been elected the new US president and has had a son. Tony asks her to become his wife, after which Diane accepts the proposal. During the wedding you can see that Tony has become the new godfather and how he has his opponents eliminated: Marzoni is liquidated at a dance event, Chucky is eaten by mini dinosaurs and Pepper is sent to hell by Sophia and her enormous flatulence.

In the end, Tony is happily married to Diane - and at the same time can hide his criminal double life from her.

useful information

  • Mafia! was filmed in Los Angeles , Beverly Hills and Reno .
  • At a production cost of approximately $ 10 million, the film grossed over $ 19 million at the box office. In Germany, the film was seen by 673,494 moviegoers.
  • Mafia! was also the last film with Lloyd Bridges. The mime died shortly after the end of filming and never saw the premiere. In honor of Bridges, the film was dedicated to him.
  • The reference to the British writer Jane Austen in the original English title has nothing to do with the actual film. At the time, many of her works were being filmed, and the misleading title was intended to refer to them.
  • A group of Italian-Americans boycotted the premiere of the film for allegedly disfiguring scenes in Italy.
  • John Frizzell, who composed the film music, took the liberty of joking and had his name changed to Gianni Frizelli in order to be mentioned in the credits .
  • The ship with which Vincenzo wants to flee to America is called Il Pacino - a clear reference to Al Pacino , who played an important role in The Godfather .

parody

In addition to several Mafia-related films ( The Godfather , Casino , Good Fellas - Three Decades in the Mafia , Scarface ), a few other movies are caricatured:

  • Jurassic Park : Chucky is killed by mini dinosaurs.
  • ET : With the ship that Vincenzo swims to America, ET also arrives in the USA.
  • The English patient : Tony is cured in a hospital for English patients and after the accident he looks just as bad as Ralph Fiennes did back then.
  • Forrest Gump : When little Tony is fleeing from Narducci, a girl calls out to him, “Run, florist, run!” (As a reference to the phrase “Run, Forrest, run!” Much quoted in the Tom Hanks film).
  • Chucky - The killer doll : Joey's son Chucky was not only modeled after the name, but also the look of the killer doll.
  • Derrick : "Harry, get the car." (As a reference to the much-quoted sentence in the well-known German crime series.)

Reviews

James Berardinelli compared the film on ReelViews with the "hilarious" comedy Crazy About Mary, also released in 1998 . In the wake of this work Mafia! "lame" despite the extremely high density of gags. While the humor seemed fresh in the director's earlier works, many of the gags now feel “recycled”, according to Berardinelli.

“The sprawling family history of a Mafia clan [...], laid out as a parody of the films in the" Godfather "trilogy. Other productions in this sub-genre are also continuously quoted and caricatured, without the film gaining any independence or persuasiveness. No more than a string of puns, little sparkling gags and tasteless slapstick interludes. "

- Lexicon of international film

" Hot Shots! " -Director Jim Abrahams pulls all Mafia clichés through the tomato sauce with relish - unfortunately there is a piling up of gunfire and fecal humor. "

- TV movie

"Although it may not have been the most original of all ideas to pull films like" The Godfather "and related things through the cocoa in 1998 of all things, Abrahams did it with an obvious love for the role models and the necessary attention to detail, so that with his Barrage of gags is also able to land regular hits. [...] This relentless principle has already applied a little patina, but the actors [...] have so much fun playing their favorite films that the viewer gets their money's worth when they sell spaghetti on a stick or Mohr's kiss of death leaves traces of lipstick on the victim. "

- kino.de

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Filming locations for Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti! on imdb.com , accessed May 6, 2017
  2. ↑ Mafia! from boxofficemojo.com , accessed December 14, 2011
  3. ↑ TOP 100 DEUTSCHLAND 1998 on insidekino.de , accessed on December 14, 2011
  4. ^ Review by James Berardinelli
  5. ↑ Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti! In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti! on tvspielfilm.de
  7. ↑ Mafia! - A noodle doesn't make spaghetti! on kino.de