The Family: Character Trumps Story

Robert De Niro is a staple for any great mobster movie. Rounding out the cast of classics such as The Godfather: Part II and Goodfellas, he’s just part of what makes Luc Besson’s The Family an enjoyable movie-going experience.

This new film combines the violence of mafia movies with quick-witted characters to create an interesting, yet predictable, black comedy. There are parts filled with dark material, such as murders and unrequited love, but there are also some scenes with little jokes and idiosyncrasies that characterize the Blake family as anything but normal.

We first encounter the Blakes as they move into their new house in Normandy, France. At first glance, Maggie Blake (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the quintessential anchor of logic for the rest of the family. She scolds her kids, Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D’Leo) for bickering in the backseat and makes sure her husband, Fred (De Niro), is directing them to the correct house. However, something seems a bit off about this family, despite its picture-perfect appearance.

The Blakes are not who they claim to be. Fred is Giovanni Manzoni, former mafia boss with a high price on his head. After betraying his mafia family, Giovanni and his real family are forced to go into hiding, with the help of the FBI. Under the protection of Tommy Lee Jones’ sarcastic Agent Robert Stansfield, Giovanni has remained hidden from countless hit men sent by the mafia to kill him and his family. This hasn’t, however, prevented some questionable things from happening. It seems that the family cannot simply assimilate into any of their new communities; people go missing, stores blow up, and the family is forced to move yet again. Stansfield hopes that Normandy will be different, but old habits are hard to kill.

The family hasn’t even unpacked before Giovanni sneaks out to dispose of a body, which elicited a few small chuckles from the audience, along with a few cringes and groans. But that’s how the entire movie plays out. The humor lies in the ridiculousness of the situations the characters find themselves. Even though the plot is nothing special, and certainly nothing too complicated, the individual adventures of each character keep the audience intrigued; at points the film seems more like separate, disconnected pieces until scenes when the family is brought together in one shot.

The individual plot lines could, at some points, seem to be from entirely different movies, and this makes the film seem a little disjointed at times. Belle pursues a crush on her math tutor; Giovanni embarks on a quest to fix the plumbing; Maggie goes to church; Warren gets bullied at school. It is through these separate journeys that each character reveals his or her hidden personalities. Although somewhat lacking with regards to overall plot, The Family does a great job with individual character development. Despite the fact that even the characters are not that entirely complex, they never cease to be surprising.

Giovanni, under his new identity, chooses to become an author, which gives him an opportunity to write his “memoirs,” or what appear to be the true accounts of his history in the mafia. The film uses his writings to give the audience a window into his past where his true character is revealed. We learn that he is a man of many principles, and that his personal “pet peeve” is being disrespected. And when he is disrespected, things never turn out great for the other party. Two characters Giovanni encounters during his plumbing escapades are beaten to a pulp, but as the film progresses and Giovanni writes more of his memoirs, he seems to be able to control his violent urges, using the writings as a sort of therapy.

The rest of his family members don’t have a constructive outlet, and thus rely on their trained violence to get them through the everyday boring life of the small town. Maggie blows up a convenience store when she hears the clerk gossiping about her in French. Belle attacks a boy with a tennis racket after he tries to have sex with her. Warren, possibly taking the most constructive route, establishes connections throughout the entire school, forming his own miniature mafia in order to get back at the boys who beat him up. Part of this revenge is, however, a well-planned physical attack on the bullies.

The Family turns sour when, by pure unbelievable coincidence, the mob boss in a New York prison discovers where the FBI has hid Giovanni and his family. The ensuing violence wasn’t the problem; it was the plot “twist” that enabled the family to be discovered in the first place. And the entire movie isn’t actually believable, but this plot device was just too improbable to make sense in the film.

All things considered, the performances in the movie were very enjoyable. It was especially nice to see Pfeiffer hold her own in this retired mob-wife role. And De Niro, of course, played his old tricks and relied on some new gags to keep his new mobster lighthearted and fun, even though he was extremely ruthless. Tommy Lee Jones is worth mentioning, although his character was very reminiscent of Agent K in the Men in Black franchise. I wish that the film had focused more on D’Leo and Agron instead of the older talent because the two young stars certainly proved that they could kick some ass. The two mastered the nuances of typical teenage angst and blended them with the calculated behaviors of successful gangsters allowing their characters to provide most of the comic relief in the film.

The downfall of the film, for me, was the primary focus on violence instead of the comedy, which, when it revealed itself, was truly funny. At first, the violence cropped up in laughable situations, but there are only so many times you can laugh at someone getting beat up by a baseball bat. With less compelling characters, The Family would be one to miss, but its scarce humor and intriguing characters make it a fine movie to see in theaters, but an even finer one to be rented from Redbox.