Mickey Blue Eyes

Year of release : 1999

Run time : 1h37m

Genre : Romance / Comedy / Crime

Cast : Hugh Grant, James Caan, Jeanne Tripplehorn

Michael is an English auctioneer, who lives in New York, who has problems with the delivery of new items, as the truck company seems to mock him, always delivering the items many weeks later than originally planned.

Michael has been dating Gina for 3 months, and plans to propose to her.

Gina is a school teacher who is liked by her students.

Michael takes her to a Chinese restaurant, where he proposes through a fortune cookie, just that the cookie is delivered to a different table. Instead of being happy, Gina starts crying and leaves.

Trying to talk to her, Michael goes to her place, where she’s told by the valet she left crying, to her father’s place. Hearing Michael proposed to her, the valet calls Gina’s father telling him he’s on his way to him.

Thinking Michael comes to ask for her hand in marriage, her father gives him a speech about how he knew he was a great guy, coming to see him, so Michael asks him for her hand in marriage, and then asks for the address.

When he finally sees Gina, she tells him she can’t marry him, because her family is a mafia crime family, and if they marry they’ll do him a small favour, and then ask for many more in return, and she doesn’t want him to be a criminal. Michael tells her they’ll do everything together and her family won’t be able to corrupt him.

After the engagement party, for the first time, his delivery is right on time, and the truck drivers are respectful. Soon, he realizes that was a favour Gina’s uncle did for him, so he’d sell his son’s weird art. Unable to get out of it, he goes through with it, and he realizes the uncle used this opportunity as a money laundering scam.

Unluckily for him, it wasn’t a one time thing, as now the uncle expects Michael to do it all the time. Even worse, there’s this old lady who wants to buy art, and keeps on bidding thinking the weird painting is a gem, due to a misunderstanding, and Michael refuses to let her buy it.

This causes problems with the artist, who comes to Michael’s place infuriated, beating him up for not letting the woman buy his painting, and threatening him with a gun. Trying to stop him, Gina manages to get the gun away from him, and sho0ts a warning shot in the ceiling ,which ricochet, k1lling her cousin.

Michael calls her father, while Gina leaves, and he takes the blame for what happened. Gina’s father helps him get rid of the body, by making it look like another crime family did it, but the uncle is not stupid, and wants a life for a life, Gina’s life or Michael’s for his son’s.

I personally enjoyed the movie, I laughed with tears quite a few times, but it felt it moved too fast. It felt they got married right away, although it was probably months.

Michael was nice, a bit afraid to be honest with people, avoiding conflict, and I liked the love he had for Gina.

Gina’s family welcomed him with open arms. Once they heard he proposed to her, they treated him as if he was one of them.

Gina kept Michael away from her family until he proposed because she didn’t want him to be involved with them, because she says they corrupt everything they touch.

The title of the movie comes from Michael being called Mickey Blue Eyes by Gina’s father, when caught trying to bury the body.

The acting was good. Hugh Grant was funny.

The soundtrack consisted of Italian music. I liked the song which opens the movie.

The movie received reviews under 49% from the critics of Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and under 6.2 from the audiences of the same platforms.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B-.

The movie grossed 54.3 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 36 million dollars.

The movie was produced by Elizabeth Hurley, who was Hugh Grant’s girlfriend at the time.

Rating : Worth a watch !