It takes forever to get to know who is who of the many characters in this over-stuffed pasta shell, but as you do, you become unintentionally amused of all of the seemingly unrelated stories wrapping their way around this troubled family led by Dennis Farina and Vanessa Redgrave. It certainly is elaborate looking, but often it goes off into tangents that make no sense and you have to begin to wonder what it's all about. You also begin to wonder if any of these characters have any real decency, especially when there are so many violent deaths including one sequence where a group of mobsters are viciously poisoned.
Poor Jennifer Tilly gets the most humiliating moments thanks to the exploitation of her squeaky voice which is a malapropism for her trashy character's personality, pregnant with one of the sons of the family and secretly married to him. Nastassja Kinski is cast as the old girlfriend of one of the dead brothers who ends up married to the other, her illegitimate son raised in a monastery, out of nowhere befriending a dying man (who sounded like a woman infected with cancer), later adopted into the family and becoming equally as violent as the older members of the family He was unaware were blood relatives.
As the film goes on, the narrative becomes more convoluted as it pops around from decade to decade, and some characters don't even seem to age. Redgrave, nominated for Golden Globe, doesn't even get one really good scene to warrant that nomination, not really her fault but that of the writing for her character. Indeed, this is a messed up TV movie, often not making any sense, overloaded with cliches and one-dimensional characters, and using manipulative music but in spite of all that, it ends up being really enjoyable in spite of the frustration surrounding the narrative.
Franco Nero, who appeared with Redgrave in "Camelot" and later in "Letters to Juliet", becomes involved with her later in the film, but even that is screwed up through the writing. As the women begin to take over the family, I have to retitle this "How Green was my Valley of the Italian Dolls", trashy and badly edited, with Imelda Staunton coming on as another female member married into the family. By then, it's too little too late to really call this a good movie, but a fun piece of trash that is genuinely so bad that you won't be able to take your eyes off of it.
Poor Jennifer Tilly gets the most humiliating moments thanks to the exploitation of her squeaky voice which is a malapropism for her trashy character's personality, pregnant with one of the sons of the family and secretly married to him. Nastassja Kinski is cast as the old girlfriend of one of the dead brothers who ends up married to the other, her illegitimate son raised in a monastery, out of nowhere befriending a dying man (who sounded like a woman infected with cancer), later adopted into the family and becoming equally as violent as the older members of the family He was unaware were blood relatives.
As the film goes on, the narrative becomes more convoluted as it pops around from decade to decade, and some characters don't even seem to age. Redgrave, nominated for Golden Globe, doesn't even get one really good scene to warrant that nomination, not really her fault but that of the writing for her character. Indeed, this is a messed up TV movie, often not making any sense, overloaded with cliches and one-dimensional characters, and using manipulative music but in spite of all that, it ends up being really enjoyable in spite of the frustration surrounding the narrative.
Franco Nero, who appeared with Redgrave in "Camelot" and later in "Letters to Juliet", becomes involved with her later in the film, but even that is screwed up through the writing. As the women begin to take over the family, I have to retitle this "How Green was my Valley of the Italian Dolls", trashy and badly edited, with Imelda Staunton coming on as another female member married into the family. By then, it's too little too late to really call this a good movie, but a fun piece of trash that is genuinely so bad that you won't be able to take your eyes off of it.