Married To The Mob is a comedy. It's important to get this straight right at the start, otherwise there'll be that terribly embarassing situation where you don't know whether to laugh or not when the fat bloke gets stiffed in the opening few minutes. Do.
Jonathan Demme's follow-up to Swimming To Cambodia is a typically entertaining diversion from the man who seems to be quite happy working with Melanie Griffiths one minute (Something Wild) and directing Fine Young Cannibals video the next. Here is Michelle Pfeiffer, Dean Stockwell and a thoroughly entertaining tale of modern day mafia, now out of little Italy and settled in suburb New Jersey.
Pfeiffer is Angela De Marco, kind-hearted and long-suffering wife of mob hitman 'Cucumber' Frank De Marco. Fed up with living in a house furnished entirely with items that have fallen of the back of the nearest lorry, she offs and ups to the nearest tenement in the Lower East Side, accurately described by Don Tony 'The Tiger' Russo as a 'real shithole'.
Stockwell, hopelessly smitten, follows her there, as does plucky but dim-witted cop Mike Downey (Matthew Modine), who goes undercover as a handyman, thus creating bags of opportunities for mistaken identities, badly-timed entrances and general farce. It would be no surprise at all if the vicar was to arrive with his pants around his ankles.