This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Eat, Pray, [Screw]
Plot Overview
Baby Kristin Balbano was brought to
America by her mother to escape persecution in Italy. By twenty-one
Kristin (Toni Collette) was married to a deadbeat musician Paul
Dorner (Tim Daish) whom she supports with her ad exec job in L.A. working under a father-and-son WASP duo and
alongside an inept Affirmative Action employee Randy (Yonv Joseph.)
She's promoting pharmaceuticals to make women pretty. Now
a dowdy housewife at forty she sends her son Domenick (Tommy
Rodger) off to college in distant Oregon where he can escape her
smothering influence. Meanwhile, Paul is chasing skirts who pass
themselves off as “feminists” so she'll feel less
threatened by their youth and beauty. She attends a women's defense
class where she practices debilitating strikes to protect her sorry
self (“stranger grabs boob”) from dangerous (“stranger
puts a gun in your face”) advances (“stranger says you're
pretty when you smile.”) Family business calls her back to Italy
when her Mafia grandfather Don Giuseppe Balbano (Alessandro Bressanello) has
died and named her executor.
At the airport
on arrival she is swept off her feet by Lorenzo (Giulio Corso) whose
advances she allows because, “he's not a stranger, he's
gorgeous.” She accepts a temporary Donna position with the Balbano family
in order to negotiate a peace with the rival Romano's whose head also makes
saucy advances on her. I was watching a couple squirrels the other
day, who were copulating in a tree. In their joy they rolled over
putting themselves upside down, the top one on the bottom holding onto
his mate above him who was grasping the tree limb above her for dear life,
all the while making whoopy. This girl's love making is like a high
wire act on a slippery slope with pillow talk not covered in her defense
chauvinism class.
Ideology
“Mafia Mamma” plots
a variation on the theme of Elizabeth Gilbert's popular memoir, Eat,
Pray, Love. Only here it's Eat, Pray, Sex. The food is
exotic, the prayer is in Latin, and the sex is adulterous. This latter
can be characterized as, (Prov. 30:20)
“Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth
her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.” Kristin has
wet dreams about an Italian chef getting his hands all creamy in a
burrutu factory,
she throws up on the corpse of her would-be lover, and in a zoom meeting
she's told she has a spot of pasta sauce on her cheek—it's blood.
There was no need for the adulteress to go to confession, but “You
left quite a mess at the villa” so “take a shower.”
Adultery is invariably messy in its repercussions.
Production Values
“” (2023) was directed
by Catherine Hardwicke. The script was from J. Michael Feldman and
Debbie Jhoon, based on an original story by Amanda Sthers. It stars
Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci and Sophia Nomvete. The mafia family
actors include Eduardo Scarpetta, Alfonso Perugini and Francesco
Masteoianni. Collette's blue ribbon performance saved this one from
oblivion. Her character's factotum Bianca (Monica Bellucci) tells
her, “You look like a librarian.” That was before her
makeover, but there's not much can be done about her toothy grin.
MPAA rated it R for bloody violence, sexual content and language. It was filmed on location in Bracciano, Rome, Lazio, Italy. Runtime is 1 hour 41 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
Written and directed by women playing out some kind of feminist fantasy, it's just plain stupid. Perhaps it would appeal to a niche audience, as would the movie's silly promotional ads at the agency, but I wouldn't count on it. For me it's borderline headache material. A conservative audience might not be offended as it does contain good features and crime is disparaged in it, but that doesn't mean they'd like it.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Feminist Groups. Suspense: Predictable. Overall movie rating: Two stars out of five.
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