 Corky Romano (2001) The incredibly lazy script concerns Corky, the sunny but clumsy son of mob boss Peter Falk, going undercover as an FBI agent to retrieve evidence being used against Falk in a racketeering trial. His slapstick foul-ups invariably result in inadvertent success for which he is increasingly rewarded, until he's regarded as the best FBI agent on the force. Of course, his main rival doesn't cotton to this, and tries to subvert Corky at every turn, which of course results in his humiliating comeuppance in the end. There's a tepid love interest, and a belabored subplot about Corky's mafioso brothers (Chris Penn and Peter Berg) coping with secrets (closeted homosexuality and illiteracy, respectively). Peter Falk is always fun to watch, but he doesn't have much to do here except ham it up and toss out the occasional offensive remark. Two scenes are laugh-out-loud funny: one in which Corky accidentally consumes a huge amount of cocaine immediately before delivering a speech to a group of second-graders, and one in which he awkwardly strains to squeak out a fart in his brothers' faces, while a crowd looks on. Not such a good thing when the best thing you can say about a film requires you to use the word "fart." Incidentally, didn't Chris Penn used to be in cool movies? Hm, maybe I dreamed that.
Review by Rita Magazine |