Film Friday: The Family (2013)

Many critics anointed Robert De Niro as the greatest actor of our time. I never bought that. I thought he was great as a gangster or a cop, but that’s about the extent of his range. That said, I really wanted to see his latest film, The Family, because it seemed like one of those perfect setups for De Niro to do what he does best. It wasn’t. This film could have been hilarious, but the tone was all wrong.

Plot

Written by one of my favorite directors, Luc Besson, The Family stars Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer as a married couple who just moved to France. It also happens that De Niro is a mobster (Giovanni Manzoni) who has turned states evidence against his entire gang and is now in the witness protection program. Dianna Agron and John D’Leo play their children and Tommy Lee Jones plays Robert Stansfield, their frustrated contact person with the FBI.

The problem is that while De Niro has given up his mobster connections, he hasn’t really given up his mobster ways. Thus, he is being moved from town to town until he blows his cover and needs to be moved again. In this instance, we see this right away as De Niro beats up a couple locals who refuse to address his concerns about water quality and about his plumbing. The rest of his family is no better. His wife sets fire to a store which offends her and her kids set up various scams at their school.

All of this is being done under the noses of the FBI agents who watch the family to make sure they stay out of trouble. That said, however, Jones knows the family is doing these things and he keeps threatening to end their government protection if De Niro doesn’t stop. De Niro responds by agreeing to stop causing problems and instead sets out to write his memoirs... memoirs the FBI cannot let De Niro publish.

With De Niro masquerading as an author, he gets invited to participate in a book discussion at the town hall. In the meantime, his son has published an innocuous saying in the school newspaper, which finds its way to America, where it is seen by the mob, who send killers to get De Niro and his family.

A bloodbath ensues.

Why This Film Didn’t Work

The most critical aspect of making any comedy work is tone. No matter how good a comedy may seem on paper, if the tone of the film isn’t right, the overall feel of the film won't be right. And this can be tricky. Indeed, the landscape of films is littered with “dark comedies” that couldn’t quite find the right tone. Even Ghostbusters would have come across as a weak horror film that couldn’t decide if it would rather have been a comedy if it been just a little more serious – much as Frighteners comes across.

At first glance, this film appeared to be another Midnight Run, a brilliant comedy that plays like a drama but keeps you laughing by hitting the right tone at the perfect moments. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even close. The problem with The Family is that it never once comes across as a comedy.

The problems begin with the characters. To make characters work in a comedy, you either need some funny characters or you need serious characters who can be dumped upon at key moments. What De Niro did so brilliantly in Midnight Run was to play the role super seriously as he took sucker punch after sucker punch from the world around him. He doesn’t do that here. Here, De Niro plays a character who is smarter than everyone and knows it. His family is much the same. No one gets the drop on them and there is nothing they can’t handle. The end result is that they are incapable of providing anything funny to the script because you can't laugh at them.

Then you have the problem that everything else in the film is far too serious. The minor characters all act depressed and helplessly become the victims of whatever abuse De Niro chooses to heap upon them. The comedic value in that type of relationship is always how the minor characters fight back, something they cannot do here. Nor is there anything abnormal going on that could produce something unexpectedly funny or strange to make you laugh. The few interactions De Niro has with the locals, which were supposed to be funny, e.g. beating up the plumber, come across as cruel rather than funny. Tommy Lee Jones, who should play the “Droopy Dog” type character who gets roundly abused, doesn’t accept any abuse from De Niro and instead reacts as if this were a serious film. And none of the characters is inherently funny.

Even when something seems kind of funny, the film never follows up on it. For example, I did laugh when Michelle Pfeiffer set fire to the store as revenge; it was very unexpected and opened all kinds of doors of comedic potential. But rather than make this the focal point of the story, perhaps with De Niro freaking out about what his wife has done and trying to cover it up from the FBI, they just take it in stride. De Niro barely even mentions it. The locals never investigate. The FBI doesn’t find out about it. And the film just drops it. Ditto on the water system guy and the plumber. Not only is it not credible that there would be no consequences, but these are the extreme moments that are supposed to make us laugh and they just get dropped by the film. Even the manuscript De Niro is writing is tossed aside and never goes anywhere.

Perhaps the biggest sin tone-wise comes at the end. This was supposed to be a comedy, but once the mobsters show up in town, they slaughter the FBI agents, slaughter some locals, and come after the family. Obviously, dark comedies will have some darkness, but as I said, the tone is key. This bloody moment, which is entirely unlike everything else in the film, just doesn’t fit any sort of comedic tone. It's too serious, too bloody, and the consequences are disproportionate to what the film has prepared us for.

So what you have here is a film that may have looked great on paper. You can see how the setup alone is appealing, as it appeared in the trailers. The actors seem perfect for the role. The story contains many of the elements a comedy should. But in moving it from paper to film, this one fell apart because it never came near projecting a comedic tone. At best, it comes across as a weak action film with a few outrageous moments that may have been intended as humor. In fact, if you didn’t tell people this was meant as a comedy, I doubt the audience would have known.

Thoughts?