cinemabon
10-09-2013, 04:29 AM
The Family – directed by Luc Besson
The basis for most gallows humor or black comedy is that in the face of tragic circumstances we laugh at the absurdity of a situation when presented with humor as a means of dealing with grim consequences. The premise is a very old one and goes back to the very beginnings of comedy in Greek theater and continues to the present day. The problems with attempts at black comedy is that sometimes the subject matters don’t often translate well into humor. In this instance, we look at the plight of a mobster on the run with his dysfunctional family – just as twisted in their approach to life as his is – who manage to mangle whatever community the witness protection program places them. “The Family” is a film that has many comic elements in it that succeed on many levels. Unfortunately, it also has some rather stereotypical situations in which the gallows humor is not funny and detracts from the overall purpose of the film.
****spoilers*****
The film opens with a family sitting around a dinner table. We see they interact at supper time the same way most families do in that the parents dominate the conversation and the children are subordinate in nature. The doorbell rings and the father answers. The first surprise in the film is sprung when a bomb explodes and the father is flung back into the kitchen, a burn corpse. In quick order, a hitman enters, dispatches the rest of the family and then proceeds to chop up the father with an axe. End scene. This jarring beginning serves two purposes. One, the transition between the sublime to the ridiculous. Second, that violence will be an accepted premise for storytelling throughout the film.
The significance of the opening is made clear almost at once, as we switch over to the interior of a car being driven by Robert DeNiro (Giovanni) with his wife in the front seat, Michelle Pfeiffer (Maggie); son John D’Leo (Warren) and daughter Dianna Agron (Belle) in the back – bickering like most families on a road trip. While the casting of DeNiro and Pfeiffer would be brilliant if they had been a couple on the run from the mob in the witness protection program, as the parents of teenage children becomes a bit of a stretch considering they are old enough to have grandchildren. This quandary is never explained and becomes a deal breaker for many critics from the start. Although the “child” stars hold up in their own scenes quite well, the mix as a family only boils down to the fact that basically they are all sadistic in nature when it comes to dealing with social injustice, even if it is only to correct people who are simply rude. Also, that 25 year old beauty Agron is just another teenager is also a stretch in that she neither displays nor exudes any of the awkwardness most teens display.
Casting issues aside, we can forgive that error if there were not for other obvious ones impossible to ignore that crop up later. The gallows humor begins when we find that none of the family members is able to deal with social rudeness well. Michelle’s Maggie burns the local grocery store down when she overhears comments made by the regular patrons in regards to her being a typical American in terms of their palate (she asks for peanut butter). This is the first of many slights against French cooking – from the high school cafeteria to the comments Maggie says about cream sauce clogging arteries versus olive oil which lubricates “the chassis.” Only Michelle could deliver a sexy line like that with assuredness.
Robert DeNiro’s Giovanni is the family example when it comes to how he deals with rude people – he kills, tortures, or brutalizes them until his rage subsides. We first see him deal with the “smell” in the family car as a man inside a large plastic tarp whom DeNiro buries in the back yard as the local butcher with whom DeNiro’s argument escalates into murder. This continues throughout the film in dealing with the local plumber, the mayor (dealt with in fantasy), and the company executive who Giovanni drags behind his car – all in an effort to clean up his water. Sometimes these scenes work as DeNiro had played mob boss Capone who used a baseball bat to deal with one of his enemies. DeNiro’s gallows humor is spot on and one of the film’s high points.
The scenes at the high school follow a similar vein of dysfunctional mob family run amok in that the son (D’Leo) begins an extortion racket while the daughter pursues the substitute math teacher in a seduction scene that should satisfy any male teacher’s fantasy about the ideal schoolgirl who only wants to be taught the facts of life by an older man. The supporting scenes only further to support the premise of the dysfunctional family as being part of the absurdity nature in this twisted comedy. Some of their physical jokes work, while others (put in more for their shock value) fail because they are simply not funny and these tend to distract from the overall flow of the film’s plot.
The movie climaxes when the mob finally catches up with traitor Giovanni only to have the kids save the day – a solution that is both predictable and rather unsatisfying in its ease of escape. The dramatic tension created throughout the film is wasted by the oversimplified ending in that this will all be repeated ad infinitum.
Directed, produced and written by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional), the auteur role serves here more against the director than for him in the scenes that simply do not work - such as the prison scenes which are dull and flat. However, Martin Scorsese was also brought aboard as an Executive Producer to help with certain issues that take place during the film – such as DeNiro’s character being force to watch the movie “Goodfellas” as part of a French film festival and sneaking several “Goodfellas” actors into the parts of mobsters was certainly Marty’s attempt to beef up the gallows humor. In some ways, it adds to the scenes (recognizing how actors parody their mobster counterparts) but again distracts from the overall plot. Finally, Tommy Lee Jones is largely wasted as he is playing his FBI character with the exact same mannerisms he did in “The Fugitive.” You could almost transpose the two characters over one another and come up with the same muted performance. Rather than give Jones any humor, his scenes actually serve to detract more from the film’s overall comedy than any other part of the picture. With no laugh lines, Jones only comes across as a curmudgeon who looks like he needs a laxative rather than the frustrated FBI agent who has to relocate the dysfunctional family every three months.
Even with a stellar cast and some great supporting roles, the overall plot of “The Family” is a cynical one at best and the stabs at black humor are reduced to chuckles rather than outright laughter in this tepid tale of life on the run Italian style. See it on HBO/Netflix/rental.
The basis for most gallows humor or black comedy is that in the face of tragic circumstances we laugh at the absurdity of a situation when presented with humor as a means of dealing with grim consequences. The premise is a very old one and goes back to the very beginnings of comedy in Greek theater and continues to the present day. The problems with attempts at black comedy is that sometimes the subject matters don’t often translate well into humor. In this instance, we look at the plight of a mobster on the run with his dysfunctional family – just as twisted in their approach to life as his is – who manage to mangle whatever community the witness protection program places them. “The Family” is a film that has many comic elements in it that succeed on many levels. Unfortunately, it also has some rather stereotypical situations in which the gallows humor is not funny and detracts from the overall purpose of the film.
****spoilers*****
The film opens with a family sitting around a dinner table. We see they interact at supper time the same way most families do in that the parents dominate the conversation and the children are subordinate in nature. The doorbell rings and the father answers. The first surprise in the film is sprung when a bomb explodes and the father is flung back into the kitchen, a burn corpse. In quick order, a hitman enters, dispatches the rest of the family and then proceeds to chop up the father with an axe. End scene. This jarring beginning serves two purposes. One, the transition between the sublime to the ridiculous. Second, that violence will be an accepted premise for storytelling throughout the film.
The significance of the opening is made clear almost at once, as we switch over to the interior of a car being driven by Robert DeNiro (Giovanni) with his wife in the front seat, Michelle Pfeiffer (Maggie); son John D’Leo (Warren) and daughter Dianna Agron (Belle) in the back – bickering like most families on a road trip. While the casting of DeNiro and Pfeiffer would be brilliant if they had been a couple on the run from the mob in the witness protection program, as the parents of teenage children becomes a bit of a stretch considering they are old enough to have grandchildren. This quandary is never explained and becomes a deal breaker for many critics from the start. Although the “child” stars hold up in their own scenes quite well, the mix as a family only boils down to the fact that basically they are all sadistic in nature when it comes to dealing with social injustice, even if it is only to correct people who are simply rude. Also, that 25 year old beauty Agron is just another teenager is also a stretch in that she neither displays nor exudes any of the awkwardness most teens display.
Casting issues aside, we can forgive that error if there were not for other obvious ones impossible to ignore that crop up later. The gallows humor begins when we find that none of the family members is able to deal with social rudeness well. Michelle’s Maggie burns the local grocery store down when she overhears comments made by the regular patrons in regards to her being a typical American in terms of their palate (she asks for peanut butter). This is the first of many slights against French cooking – from the high school cafeteria to the comments Maggie says about cream sauce clogging arteries versus olive oil which lubricates “the chassis.” Only Michelle could deliver a sexy line like that with assuredness.
Robert DeNiro’s Giovanni is the family example when it comes to how he deals with rude people – he kills, tortures, or brutalizes them until his rage subsides. We first see him deal with the “smell” in the family car as a man inside a large plastic tarp whom DeNiro buries in the back yard as the local butcher with whom DeNiro’s argument escalates into murder. This continues throughout the film in dealing with the local plumber, the mayor (dealt with in fantasy), and the company executive who Giovanni drags behind his car – all in an effort to clean up his water. Sometimes these scenes work as DeNiro had played mob boss Capone who used a baseball bat to deal with one of his enemies. DeNiro’s gallows humor is spot on and one of the film’s high points.
The scenes at the high school follow a similar vein of dysfunctional mob family run amok in that the son (D’Leo) begins an extortion racket while the daughter pursues the substitute math teacher in a seduction scene that should satisfy any male teacher’s fantasy about the ideal schoolgirl who only wants to be taught the facts of life by an older man. The supporting scenes only further to support the premise of the dysfunctional family as being part of the absurdity nature in this twisted comedy. Some of their physical jokes work, while others (put in more for their shock value) fail because they are simply not funny and these tend to distract from the overall flow of the film’s plot.
The movie climaxes when the mob finally catches up with traitor Giovanni only to have the kids save the day – a solution that is both predictable and rather unsatisfying in its ease of escape. The dramatic tension created throughout the film is wasted by the oversimplified ending in that this will all be repeated ad infinitum.
Directed, produced and written by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional), the auteur role serves here more against the director than for him in the scenes that simply do not work - such as the prison scenes which are dull and flat. However, Martin Scorsese was also brought aboard as an Executive Producer to help with certain issues that take place during the film – such as DeNiro’s character being force to watch the movie “Goodfellas” as part of a French film festival and sneaking several “Goodfellas” actors into the parts of mobsters was certainly Marty’s attempt to beef up the gallows humor. In some ways, it adds to the scenes (recognizing how actors parody their mobster counterparts) but again distracts from the overall plot. Finally, Tommy Lee Jones is largely wasted as he is playing his FBI character with the exact same mannerisms he did in “The Fugitive.” You could almost transpose the two characters over one another and come up with the same muted performance. Rather than give Jones any humor, his scenes actually serve to detract more from the film’s overall comedy than any other part of the picture. With no laugh lines, Jones only comes across as a curmudgeon who looks like he needs a laxative rather than the frustrated FBI agent who has to relocate the dysfunctional family every three months.
Even with a stellar cast and some great supporting roles, the overall plot of “The Family” is a cynical one at best and the stabs at black humor are reduced to chuckles rather than outright laughter in this tepid tale of life on the run Italian style. See it on HBO/Netflix/rental.