I have watched the trailer twice now, and it seems like there should have been a record scratch in it 5 or 6 times.

In the opening of Mafia Mamma, Collette's character Kristin states that she just turned 40, which caused me to spit out my drink. (Collette turned 50 last year.) Her age is actually kind of a problem within the film. In the film, Kristin sends her son off to college and discovers her grandfather has died, both of which feel weird because Collette looks (and is) 50, which is probably why they make a point of saying she's 40. Because when you're 50 and a grandparent passes away, people usually say "well the suffering is finally over."

There's another weird detail in this movie that's been bugging me. The reason Kristin doesn't know her grandfather is because when she was just a baby, her father was killed by another mob family and her mom decided to move to America and raise her there so she would be safe. There's a joke about how she thinks her dad died in a construction accident and then the truth is revealed to her. But what's weird is, there's never a daughter/mom scene to resolve that decision, and they could have leveraged the father's death to make a more personal connection. Instead, both facts are dropped and never brought up again. I was expecting a call from the mom toward the end, or to see Kristin's picture hanging on the wall next to her father and grandfather's or something, but... nope. Nothing.

Toni Collette, the lead in this, also played the mother of the little boy from "The Sixth Sense," and is/was the recipient of one of my favorite pieces of movie dialogue, which I believe I quote for my own purposes once a week, when the kid says, "I'm ready to communicate with you now."

Great Gambino, bro! I can think of lots of examples! Here are 10:

"Legally Blonde" (2001) - A fashionable sorority queen is dumped by her boyfriend and decides to enroll in Harvard Law School to win him back.

"Miss Congeniality" (2000) - An FBI agent goes undercover as a contestant in the Miss United States beauty pageant to prevent a terrorist attack.

"The Devil Wears Prada" (2006) - A recent college graduate lands a job as an assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor, struggling to adapt to the cutthroat world of high fashion.

"Enchanted" (2007) - A fairy-tale princess is banished by an evil queen and ends up in modern-day New York City, trying to navigate the complexities of the real world.

"Bridesmaids" (2011) - A woman is asked to be the maid of honor for her best friend's wedding, but she struggles to fit in with the other bridesmaids and deal with her own personal issues.

"The Proposal" (2009) - A Canadian executive faces deportation and convinces her assistant to marry her, leading to a trip to his hometown in Alaska and humorous cultural clashes.

"13 Going on 30" (2004) - A 13-year-old girl wakes up as a 30-year-old woman and must navigate adulthood and reconcile with the choices she made.

"Never Been Kissed" (1999) - A journalist goes undercover as a high school student to gather information for an article, but she ends up reliving the awkwardness of her own teenage years.

"Confessions of a Shopaholic" (2009) - A shopaholic journalist struggles with debt and attempts to land a job at a prestigious fashion magazine while facing the consequences of her spending habits.

"The Princess Diaries" (2001) - A socially awkward teenager discovers that she is the heir to the throne of a European kingdom, forcing her to adapt to royal life and etiquette.

These movies showcase female characters who find themselves in unfamiliar situations and explore their journeys of self-discovery and personal growth.

As I see it, in this sort of "fish out of water" scenario, there are probably two ways to play it, either (1) she starts out clueless and possibly gets better as the movie goes on, with a lot of sheer dumb luck, or (2) you play it straight to where the person starts out clueless but puts in a serious effort to get good at it.

In comedies, for those sorts of performances, (1) was very well done with Jamie Lee Curtis (involuntarily) playing a spy in [i]True Lies[/i]. For (2), this was also done very well by Michael Keaton in [i]Mr. Mom[/i] and Robin Williams in [i]Mrs. Doubtfire[/i]. At the moment, I'm sorry to say I can't think of any female examples. If you're good at this as an actor/actress, you can make it work. Apparently, the actress in this movie was not up to the task or the story was not very well written. Maybe both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a29h1P66uXc

After sending her son off to college and discovered her husband is cheating on her, middle-aged Kristin has little to stick around Portland for when her presence is requested at her estranged grandfather's funeral in Rome. At the funeral, Kristin is surprised to learn her grandfather was not the owner of a winery but rather the head of a Mafia family, and even more surprised to learn that in his will, he has named her as the new head of the family. Hilarity and blood ensue.

Kristin, who works at an ad agency, is both maternal and clueless. She survives one assassination attempt purely by accident, and manages to defeat another assassin by performing the moves she learned in her self-defense exercise class. In an important meeting between two warring families, she brings muffins. She's never seen the Godfather, but does eventually "skim the Wikipedia page" after repeatedly hearing references to the films. Throughout her journey, Kristin not only has to solve problems her new Mafia family is facing, but must figure out who she is -- and wants to be -- in the process.

Mafia Mamma's biggest problem is it is as unfaithful to what it wants to be as Kristin's husband. The same woman who has never seen the Godfather films and is so clueless as to bake and bring muffins to a meeting of the families is the same woman who gruesomely murders a would-be assassin (at one point his eyeball goes rolling across the floor) and takes a little too quickly to the tradition of mailing people's body parts to her enemies to send a message. In one scene, the family's captain Bianca is putting the moves on Kristin, and a few minutes later she is comically blocking incoming bullets with her sexy titanium leg. Mafia Mamma is a "fish out of water" story in which Kristin is clueless to the ways of the Mob, but she's not a clueless person -- she's her family's sole breadwinner and, despite being a bit of a helicopter mom, manages to keep things together. There's a bit of a running theme that women aren't empowered or respected, except Bianca totally is, which muddies a message that only mostly pays off. Had she been a bit more clueless, or had the writers committed a bit more to any of these themes, this could have been the mamma of mafia films.