Viciously dark comedies with satirical undertones can be wonderful things, and immoral protagonists are deliciously compelling in the correct context. Director Luc Besson and The Sopranos’ story editor Michael Caleo clearly tried to capture this appeal in their mafia comedy screenplay, The Family. Tried, but failed miserably. A satire without a target, this jarring and aimless film lacks either an engaging plot or sympathetic characters.
With a sitcom set-up framed as a culture clash French farce, Besson’s film sees stereotypical loudmouth mafia member-turned-snitch Robert De Niro and his family arrive at yet another Witness Protection arranged home, this time in Normandy. From their immediate, nonsensical violent outbursts – De Niro’s vicious beating of a late plumber, matriarch Michelle Pfeiffer’s arson attack on a supermarket with rude cashiers – two things are clear. Firstly, these characters lack motivations and any plausible survival instinct. Secondly, the remorseless brutality and Ugly Americanism in the face of minor trespasses by the caricatured French is meant to be funny, but isn’t.
With Martin Scorsese acting as executive producer, the homage to Goodfellas is not just obvious, but explicit, accounting for the film’s one decent joke. But the “comedic” violence is interrupted by horrible throwaway threats of rape and suicide. Besson entirely misses the point. Unlike Scorsese’s work, the violence in The Family delivers no emotional fallout or vengeful consequences. And as a comedy, the characters are too one-dimensional, inarticulate and dull for there to be any guilty glee in watching their prideful aggression unfold.
The Family may well be an organised hit on De Niro’s career, which itself has been narrowly dodging death for quite some time now.