There’s no more perfect song to open a movie than Rosemary Clooney’s Mambo Italiano in Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob. It’s a delightful nonsense song that mimics Cuban mambo music while spilling out lyrics that are about as authentically Italian as a suburban Olive Garden. It’s Demme’s way of announcing that his gangster comedy will be a zesty, multicultural puttanesca that may evoke The Godfather and other genre standards, but mostly indulges in the cartoon kitsch of Long Island goombahs. The film that follows isn’t quite a parody, a spoof or a satire. It’s merely an unmitigated joy from start to finish.
There are so many fun touches around the edges of Married to the Mob – the colorful production design, the expertly curated new wave soundtrack, the endless gallery of big and supporting players – but as Angela de Marco, a housewife fed up with her two-timing gangster husband and the hornet’s nest of gossipy mob wives, Michelle Pfeiffer holds everything together. She had shown some comedic flair in earlier films like Into the Night and The Witches of Eastwick, but as with Melanie Griffith in Demme’s previous feature, Something Wild, Pfeiffer seizes the opportunity to impose a fresh confidence and charisma in the lead role. Her Angela is determined and street smart, but also eager to break out and have a good time, which is not something a mob wife numbed by Valium is permitted to do.
With her marriage to “Cucumber” Frank de Marco (Alec Baldwin) already crumbling, Angela gets the chance at a fresh start when Frank’s boss, Tony “the Tiger” Russo (Dean Stockwell), happens to be sleeping with the same waitress and knocks him off for it. Hoping to get away from “the family”, Angela hastily donates a house full of stolen goods to Goodwill and moves with her young son into a crummy apartment in the city, but her troubles are only just beginning. Tony courts her aggressively, despite the threat of his queen bee wife, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl), the only human being he actively fears; and the FBI, led by agent Mike Downey (Matthew Modine) sees her as a possible means to nail Tony on a murder charge.
The world of Married to the Mob is comprehensively tacky, from the King Arthur theme of the King’s Roost mafia hangout to the fake Greek columns and statues surrounding the honeymoon suite where Frank and Tony rendezvous with the same mistress. The hairdos are as expansive as the accents, and the various mob nicknames are a consistently hilarious running joke, like when a pianist improvises a song around “Tony the Tiger” or an FBI spotter points out James Roe, a henchman better known as “Jimmie Fisheggs”. Assassination jobs are the money sequences of most gangster films, but here Demme and company offer up Burger World, a fake fast-food restaurant with its own jingle (“The fries are crispy, the shakes are dreamy, the Double Continental with cheese is dreamy”) and crooner Chris Isaak as the killer clown at the drive-thru window.
The cast is loaded with welcome faces that would appear repeatedly in Demme films – Charles Napier as a hairdresser who gushes over Angela’s “one in a million” follicles, Tracey Walter as the peeping manager of a chicken joint, reggae icon Sister Carol as the owner of a beauty shop – but Ruehl is the clear standout as Connie, who’s as much of a terror when she’s sympathizing as when she’s cornering Angela at the grocery store (Ruehl’s expression of mock pity as she crushes an entire carton of eggs with her bare hands may be the funniest piece of acting in the film). If the film hadn’t come out a decade before The Sopranos, it would seems like Ruehl took note of Carmela Soprano’s sinister passive-aggression and opted to crank up the volume.
But Ruehl is merely atop a long list of quirky pleasures that Demme squeezes into Married to the Mob, including a starter kit of premium 80s college rock (New Order, Pixies, The Feelies), well-placed family dog reaction shots, and an FBI agent who dresses himself like Wallace in the Wallace & Gromit shorts. Few of the laughs in the film feel like punchlines or payoffs to some heavily orchestrated joke. Demme’s approach is more low-key and breezy, cruising confidently on the assumption that his DayGlo gangland will be fun enough without him having to push too hard. He catches a rhythm and does the mambo Italiano. It feels like your feet never touch the floor.
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Married to the Mob is available on Hoopla, Kanopy and Pluto in the US and Amazon Prime in the UK
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