When this flick was in theaters, it was the B choice that I just never got around to. I laughed with a guy in concessions that, whatever I was seeing today, at least it wasn’t Mafia Mamma. I have no excuse for my amused dismissal though… but that’s the attitude I had going into a home rental. And I was wrong.

Mafia Mamma stars Toni Collette as an average American ad exec who travels to Italy for her grandfather’s funeral. Where she finds out she’s been chosen to be the new head of her mafia family… and she’s never even seen The Godfather.

The movie is chock full of Italian mafia clichés that initially made me roll my eyes. How uncreative, I thought. And I didn’t think Collette was really pulling off an “average” American in a heightened experience. But that was my residual attitude speaking because I found myself laughing shortly after those dismissive thoughts.

It’s funny. It’s genuinely funny… and that’s due to fun side characters but mainly to Collette nailing her comic reactions to the insanity going on around her. Plus the movie is delightfully gory with its mafia murders… including a badass scene of someone getting butchered by a high heel. Trust me, it’s funnier – and more badass – than it sounds.

I think the second half of the film isn’t as fun as the first. It has its moments but it loses a lot of the heightened comedy as she settles into her new role. But it’s still pretty decent and continues to squeezes out some laughs.

Color me surprised… and I probably shouldn’t have been. I like Toni Collette and if I realized Katherine Hardwicke directed it, I’d have jumped at it sooner. So glad I was able to get out of my headspace and enjoy the movie for what it was, not what it might have been.

Score: 82