On my way to picking up G.I. Joe to go see a movie I narrowly escaped an accident. An unusual amount of traffic had come down my street and lined up more than two blocks deep at the stop sign. So, the view to my right was blocked. A woman in a Passat was driving up to what would have been directly in front of me but she stopped short. She saw I wanted to make a left turn and was giving me the space. I took a quick look to the right and couldn’t see any movement or lights or cars coming. I looked to the left, waved at the nice lady and started to make my turn. It was at this moment her eyes widened and she started to clutch her face in horror that I realized I was about to be in an accident. Looking in my rearview mirror I saw another driver had completely stopped and slightly turned off the road to avoid hitting me. That is about as close as one can get to being in an accident without crashing. I felt embarrassed. I was angry with myself for making such a mistake. I felt this pit open in my stomach about how close I came and knew right then, this was going to be the worst feeling I experienced all day.
I was wrong.
Because then I saw The Family. A movie so joyless it made me feel ugly inside. More ugly than almost causing a car accident.
I write comedy. I perform stand-up, sketch, and improv. And Luc Besson’s latest cinematic endeavor made me wonder if I had lost my sense of humor. This pile of a movie tries to be a comedy. I can even see where the jokes are located. But it’s impossible to have fun.
You maim the one on the left.
The Family is a film about former gangster, Robert De Niro, taking his wife and two kids into the witness protection program for having snitched on the mob. A set up ripe for ironic and stark humor. But rather than show the humor of a mob family trying to fit in despite their violent past, Besson chooses to just show the dark. Yeah, they attempt to fit in but at any misstep of anyone in their path they wreak a vengeance of violence involving, kerosene, bats, hammers, tennis rackets, and anything else that harms and maims. And this is supposed to be funny.
The father puts a plumber into the hospital with a bat and hammer for giving a less than satisfactory answer to his plumbing problems. How funny.
The mother blows up a grocery store for its ethnocentric employees and breaks down crying when a priest berates her in public. Joy.
The son bribes his new schoolmates into beating up the gang of local bullies. Gets caught violently bilking the school system, and decides to run away on a train. Fun times.
The daughter seduces a teacher and when he rebuffs her, she comes close to committing suicide. Hilarious!
I fully well know that this is supposed to be a comedy. I am completely informed that the comedy is supposed to come from the contrast and juxtapositions of putting violent people in domestic situations.
IT JUST DOESN’T WORK.
These people are repugnant. With zero redeeming value. They shoot violence out of their pores and when the mob comes calling to wipe out the snitches once and for all, I think we are supposed to feel some kind of perverse tension and a level of undeserved compassion for this family who are suddenly fighting for their very lives. I might have learned to care if they hadn’t spent so much time blowing up and beating up the inhabitants of their Witness Protection home Normandy, France.
‘Whatcha writin’ about?’
‘Killin’ people’
‘Awe’
Are the active mob killers worse? Well, yes. But not by much. This movie completely misses the point. De Niro’s father character narrates the whole story via an autobiography he starts writing that worries his FBI handler (Tommy Lee Jones). De Niro’s motivation is a selfish desire to be famous after years of anonymity in protection. The film is written and directed about a gangster who isn’t remorseful, one bit, about all the atrocities he’s caused and instead wants attention. I might have well been watching the fantastical home movies of a career sociopath.
The FBI agents are idiots. The townspeople are somewhat unlikeable at worst and mildly okay at best. And the stupidity of people’s actions is completely unforgivable because there is nothing enjoyable going on in the first place. This is my least favorite movie of the year. By far. Without question. I felt dirty and unhappy. At least with the prior title holder (A Good Day to Die Hard) there were some amazing unintentional laughs. I spent 30 minutes with my friends after Die Hard cracking jokes. After The Family, G.I. Joe and I spent 30 minutes angrily discussing how terrible we felt.
I think I heard my standards dropping.
So I’ve spent a bunch of time saying nasty things. And there’s that old adage, if you can’t say something nice say nothing at all. So here goes… I think Michelle Pfeiffer is a wonderful actress and despite the disgusting mob informant wife that she has to play, she manages a range of emotion worthy of an actress of her caliber.
Everything else sucks.