Mafia!

For other uses, see Mafia (disambiguation).

Jane Austen's Mafia!
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jim Abrahams
Produced by	Peter Abrams Robert L. Levy
Written by	Jim Abrahams Greg Norberg Michael McManus
Narrated by	Jay Mohr
Starring	Lloyd Bridges Jay Mohr Olympia Dukakis Christina Applegate
Music by	John Frizzel (credited as Gianni Frizzelli)
Cinematography	Pierre Letarte
Editing by	Terry Stokes
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	July 24, 1998
Running time	84 mins.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10,000,000
Box office	$19,889,299 (US)

Mafia!, also known as Jane Austen's Mafia! is a 1998 comedy film directed by Jim Abrahams and starring Jay Mohr, Lloyd Bridges, Olympia Dukakis, and Christina Applegate. It spoofs Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series and various other mafia films, notably Martin Scorsese's Casino. The film also parodies films in other genres, ranging from Forrest Gump to Il Postino and The English Patient.

Jane Austen's Mafia! received generally negative reviews, but has developed a following since its video release.^[1]

Plot

Like The Godfather: Part II, the narrative of Mafia! consists of a series of flashbacks interwoven with the main plot. Jay Mohr plays Tony, the son of a prominent Mafia don, Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino (Bridges). As the film opens, Tony introduces the main thread when he exits a Vegas casino and walks to his car, accompanied by a voiceover explaining his philosophy of life. When he starts the car, it explodes.

The story then regresses more than half a century to describe the boyhood of Tony's father, Vincenzo, who was born in Italy, the clumsy son of a Sicilian postman. One day, while making a delivery for his father, Vincenzo trips and the parcel bursts open, revealing a strange white powder. The parcel's recipient, concluding that the delivery boy has seen too much, tracks Vincenzo to a street fair, where he kills his father; the boy, however, escapes to America, where he grows to young manhood, marries, and struggles with poverty before finally finding his destiny as a mafia boss.

The film then visits the recent past; Tony has just returned from the Korean War and is bringing his idealistic Protestant girlfriend, Diane (Applegate) to meet his family and friends at his big brother Joey's wedding reception (a parody of Connie Corleone's wedding in the beginning of The Godfather). During the festivities, however, Vincenzo is shot 47 times in an attempted hit and nearly dies. Tony avenges the attack, then goes into hiding in Las Vegas, where he becomes a casino manager. Diane leaves him, saying he's abandoned the peaceful ideals of his youth, and adding that she'll never be anything to his Sicilian family but "that Protestant chick who never killed anyone."

Vincenzo recovers from his 47 gunshot wounds and visits Las Vegas, where he officially names Tony his successor; Joey, furious at being passed over, is told "You get Wisconsin." The Don then returns home, where he falls victim to his five-year-old grandson, Chucky, who assassinates him by spraying him with malathion (parody of Vito Corleone's heart attack in The Godfather). Meanwhile, Tony's casino is a great success until he meets a femme fatale, Pepper Gianini, hired by a man named Cesar Marconi as part of a deep-laid plan to distract him from his duties and to drive a wedge between him and Joey. The film returns to the present after Tony catches Joey and Pepper cavorting in a hotel room together and walks out in disgust - only to have his car explode.

Tony is horribly but temporarily disfigured, and attends his father's funeral in a wheelchair, where he spots the killers when he sees little Chucky taking a payoff. However, he decides to postpone vengeance until he can win back Diane's love and put his life in order. Diane has by this time become President of the United States, and is on the brink of declaring world peace when Tony goes looking for her. He persuades her to put world peace on the back burner until after their wedding. During the ceremony, with the help of Vincenzo's mother (Dukakis), several henchmen, and an Eskimo, he settles the family's accounts in an orgy of slaughter (filmed similarly to the end of The Godfather), even arranging the harpooning of Barney the purple dinosaur as a bonus.

Cast

Actor	Role
Jay Mohr	Anthony 'Tony' Cortino
Billy Burke	Joey Cortino
Christina Applegate	Diane Steen
Pamela Gidley	Pepper Gianini
Olympia Dukakis	Sophia Cortino
Lloyd Bridges	Vincenzo Cortino
Louis Mandylor	Vincenzo Cortino as a young man
Jason Fuchs	Vincenzo Cortino as a boy
Joe Viterelli	Dominick Clamato
Tony Lo Bianco	Cesar Marzoni
Blake Hammond	Fatso Paulie Orsatti
Philip Suriano	Frankie Totino (as Phil Suriano)
Vincent Pastore	Gorgoni
Marisol Nichols	Carla
Carol Ann Susi	Mrs. Clamato
Gregory Sierra	Bonifacio
Larry Laverty	Croupier
Catherine Lloyd Burns	Woman in Vegas Show (uncredited)

Box office performance

In its opening weekend the film took $6,577,961 in 1,942 theatres, averaging $3,387. In total in the US, the film made $19,889,299.^[2]

References

1. ^ "A sampling of reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1083535-mafia/. Retrieved 2009-12-14. 
2. ^ "Mafia!". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mafia.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 

External links

• Jane Austen's Mafia! at the Internet Movie Database
• Jane Austen's Mafia! at AllRovi
• Jane Austen's Mafia! at Rotten Tomatoes