My Cousin Vinny

My Cousin Vinny Review

This is one of the few movies that my wife and I find ourselves watching whenever it comes on cable.

It is virtually a reverse fish out of water story. Most fish out of the water stories involve the small town visits the big city. In this case big city visits the small town. Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei are brilliant as Brooklynites coping with the differences in small town life and mores as Pesci seeks to defend his cousin (Ralph Macchio) and his cousin's friend from a mistaken murder charge.

Although somewhat inept in the intricacies of courtroom procedure and demeanor, "Vinny" is a famed family arguer, and his savvy in arguing the facts comes across in amusing ways as the case proceeds. Vinny and his girlfriend Mona (Tomei), have a sequence of funny adventures in their interactions around town while the trial is going on. Fred Gwynne's performance as the judge is priceless.

This is a rare movie with no "bad guys" in it. Of course the real murderers are bad guys, but they do not actually appear in the film. The DA is fair if sometimes condescending, the police are just doing their job, as is the judge. The witnesses are well meaning if wrong about what they think they saw. The closest thing to a bad guy is a man from the town that won't pay his pool bet debt to Mona. LOL

If you haven't seen this movie, it is time you did. Be prepared for some bad language, but also for a mountain of laughs!

My Cousin Vinny Feature

• MY COUSIN VINNY

My Cousin Vinny Overview

Two carefree pals (Ralph Macchio and Mitchell Whitfield) traveling through Alabama are mistakenly arrested, and charged with murder. Fortunately, one of them has a cousin who's a lawyer - Vincent Gambini (Joe Pesci, Lethal Weapon 3, Home Alone), a former auto mechanic from Brooklyn who just passed his bar exam after his sixth try. Vinny's never been in court - or in Alabama - and when he arrives with his leather-clad girlfriend (Marisa Tomei in her OscarÂ(r) winning Supporting Actress performance), to try his first case, it's a real shock - for him and the Deep South!

My Cousin Vinny Specifications

When two Italian-American boys from New York are falsely accused of murder in a small Alabama town, they call for a lawyer--but the only lawyer they know is their cousin Vinny (Joe Pesci), who made six attempts before he passed his bar exam. My Cousin Vinny is a classic fish-out-of-water comedy; the flimsy plot about clearing the two boys and solving the murder is just a hook to support a lot of culture-clash humor. Thanks to the strong cast of character actors like Fred Gwynne, Austin Pendleton, and Lane Smith, it's pretty funny--even old-hat jokes about Brooklyn versus Southern accents come to life. Pesci has played a few too many schticky characters, but this time it works. There's just enough humanity in his caricature to make Vinny likable and entertaining. When the movie was released, there was controversy about whether Marisa Tomei, playing Vinny's big-haired and black-leather-wearing fiancée, deserved to win the best supporting actress Oscar (she beat out Judy Davis, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, and Vanessa Redgrave); but seeing her performance on its own, it's a comic marvel and worthy of honor. --Bret Fetzer

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Oct 27, 2010 10:33:06