The Godson Reviews

A long nap with the fishes would be preferable to viewing this painfully unfunny Mafia send-up. You know a movie is really bad when the highlight is a cameo appearance by Joey Buttafuoco. The Oddfather (Dom DeLuise) is ready to step down as Don of the Calzone crime family. Heir apparent Sunny (Bob Hoge) survives a hit, but gets knocked unconscious and is mistakenly buried alive. Because #2 son Frito (Paul Greenberg), a postal worker, has gone insane, the Oddfather names his youngest son "Guppy" (Kevin McDonald), a prissy weirdo, the new mob chieftain. After graduating from Mafia University, Guppy meets The Rodfather (Rodney Dangerfield), Don of a rival famiglia, and his beautiful daughter Don Na (Fabiana Udenio). As part of his plan to ruin the Calzones, The Rodfather has Don Na date Guppy, but when she really falls in love with Guppy, The Rodfather imprisons her. Guppy desperately needs to raise funds to save his bankrupt family, but after such moneymaking schemes as starting a 1-800 phone sex line and robbing a sperm bank go awry, he decides to throw a $20,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner. After clawing out of his grave, Sunny shows up at the party, as does Don Na, who has escaped from her father's dungeon. The Rodfather, Frito, and other guests all attempt to murder Guppy. When the bloodshed subsides, Guppy announces his plan to take the Calzones out of the crime business and buy a movie studio with the money he's raised. Against The Rodfather's wishes Don Na marries Guppy. Beneath the lowly level of even 1998's other gangland parody, JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA!, THE GODSON aspires to the Mel Brooks school of comedy. Writer-director Bob Hoge (who plays Sunny) certainly tries hard. Along with predictable nods to THE GODFATHER (1972), SCARFACE (1983), and GOODFELLAS (1990), there are pop culture references on subjects ranging from "Charlie's Angels" to SLING BLADE (1996), as well as topical jokes on Mike Tyson's ear- biting and Bill Clinton's womanizing. There are also pure Brooks's moments, like when the movie stops to let a producer and writer discuss the script's developments and Guppy hawks GODSON action figures. The problem is, none of it is funny. This cinematic train wreck is about par for the course for DeLuise (who would have thought he could do worse than 1994's SILENCE OF THE HAMS?); it would toll the death knell for the movie career of Dangerfield, except he barely has one to speak of anyway. As for Kevin McDonald, who was hilarious as a member of the "Kids in the Hall" troupe, he should just be very embarrassed. (Violence, sexual situations.)