Cookie is an unconventional misfit of a teenager, whose manners annoy her father. But when he gets out of prison he wants to do the right thing by her, and so, after a couple of other bright ideas don't pan out, he hires her as his chauffeur. Eavesdropping on everything, she quickly discovers that her father has been swindled by his old partner in crime (Michael V. Gazzo) and is in danger of getting killed if he complains too much.
Know these facts, and the movie holds few surprises. It's the fourth recent movie about Italian-American family life and the Mafia, and the least successful. After the rich details in "Married to the Mob," "Wise Guys" and "Spike of Bensonhurst," this one has the fewest surprises. It's all plot and behavior, and short on juice.
There is by now a visual landscape that we come to look for in these Mafioso comedies, a landscape painted in our imaginations by the films of Coppola, Scorsese and DePalma. We know about the big cars and the Mafia restaurants and the expensive suits and the urban wastelands and industrial parking lots where illicit meetings take place. We know the interiors of the homes will be garishly decorated and that the women will all look like they bought their wardrobes in the dress shops of Atlantic City hotels.
All of this stuff is just atmosphere, but in "Cookie" it's made to count for a lot, because the characters don't seem to vibrate with lives of their own. They all seem at the service of the plot.
(If you want to see Italian-Americans filled with life and played convincingly, check out the new movie "True Love.") That isn't to say that the performances are bad - just that they're thinly written. Falk gives us a version of the character he has been playing for years, with no major variations. Lloyd, as his daughter, lacks the absolute originality she brought to her movie debut in "Wish You Were Here," but that's because she's been forced into a movie-teenager mold instead of having a truly original character written for her. We can anticipate the trajectory of her role almost from the first few scenes.
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