Toni Collette and Monica Belucci pair up for a comedic tale about a suburban housewife who inherits an Italian crime family.
Mafia Mamma blends various plot cliches... badly.
There's the fish-out-of-water, the feminist fable as "Mamma" breaks out of a suffocating marriage, a comedy crime romp and belatedly, a parody of a rather more well-known mafia movie.
The film stars two women not usually associated with low-brow comedy - Australian Toni Collette and Italian Monica Belucci.
Okay, Toni did cut her teeth playing Muriel in Muriel's Wedding, but these days she's better known for darker fare, notably the terrifying Hereditary.
The stately and glamorous Monica has specialised almost entirely in dramatic roles.
So, can they carry off what's essentially Carry on Mafia? Let's see.
All-American mom Kristin - Toni Collette - is told her long-estranged Italian grandfather has died, and she's summoned to Rome for the funeral.
This happens - in one of those coincidences that only happen in bad comedy scripts - at the precise time she discovers her husband is cheating on her. Her gym buddy Jenny tells her to seize the day. So she does.
At the funeral, she meets Grandpa's secretary Bianca - Monica Belucci - and various amusing, hatchet-faced Italian men who go to some trouble not to tell her anything until the last minute.
In this case, the last minute is driving to the funeral, where Kristin and Bianca are set upon by gun-wielding gangsters.
Since Kristin doesn't have access to the movie poster of Mafia Mamma, she needs some explanation. This is forthcoming at the reading of the will.
And because it's a movie, the reading is a videotape of the late Grandpa. Kristin has to take over the family business.
Now you may think a suburban mum with assertiveness issues is hardly the right person to run a Mafia family. That's certainly the position taken by the rest of the family and, frankly, by most of the audience.
So it's now the task of Mafia Mamma to not only convince us of this hilarious idea but do something with it.
Aside from the hard-to-believe story, the film is notable for ineffective casting, wayward shifts in tone and a tin ear for comedy.
If you're going to kill people in a comedy - and my advice is to try not to - then stabbing them repeatedly and graphically in the head with stiletto heels may be a little confronting.
Time is strangely flexible in Mafia Mamma, too.
Kristin falls in love with a total stranger within five minutes of getting off the plane and then spends far more time chasing after him than dodging various homicidal rival gangsters.
She also seems to learn how to make world-class wine in about a week or two - such is the power of a musical montage.
In fact every ten minutes, it seems, there's another reason to be irritated by Mafia Mamma - like those muffins.
Do I blame Toni Collette? I suppose she's only following the orders of director Catherine Hardwicke. But Catherine's following the orders of her producer, who turns out to be Toni Collette.
To be fair, Toni's not the only producer - there are another 24 of them, never a good sign.
They say "Success has a thousand parents, while failure is an orphan".
Sadly, the opposite seems to be the case in Mafia Mamma. I think the blame can be shared among everyone.
