My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Rated R for a lot of swearing.  That's really about it.  I mean, the movie is about a murder.  But the murder stuff, despite being the fulcrum of the movie, is almost more in concept than in --pun intended --execution.  There's some implied sexuality.  But the worst stuff is the implied prison rape jokes.  That gets to be a little bit much.  Never mind, I take it back.  If you are looking for nuanced looks at culture, this movie is going to only offer you offensive stereotypes.

DIRECTOR:  Jonathan Lynn

I am unburdened by any ties of nostalgia when it comes to watching this movie.  Think about it.  I was born in 1983.  This movie comes out in 1992.  It's straight up an R-rated movie.  I know.  My generation was infamous for watching movies that they shouldn't have been watching at younger ages.  But my parents would have had no reason to show me My Cousin Vinny considering that I was nine-years-old.  I know.  It's a classic to a lot of you. But for me?  This was one of the movies that kind of passed me by.  The only reason that I decided to watch it now is that I have always prided myself in watching all of the movies that are cultural talking points and My Cousin Vinny has always been one of them.

I'm going to hurt some feelings right now. In the same way that The Breakfast Club doesn't really do anything for me, My Cousin Vinny is more annoying than it is good.  I'm not saying that I don't see what's appealing about this movie to other people.  I get that in spades.  This movie is so buried in 1992 that I can see people in the theaters rolling with laughter over what can ulimately be attributed to lazy filmmaking.  I feel like I'm being really rough with this movie and I try to be nicer about things.  Part of me is really frustrated with a lot of this film because there is something pretty good about My Cousin Vinny, namely, the third act.  From what I understand, Dale Launer was a law school guy who wanted to make a trial movie.  I was even told that some law schools show My Cousin Vinny as a crash course on procedure and decorum in a courtroom.  It's just that...that final third of the film feels like what the entire movie should have been.  Instead, we get two disparate films.  The first two-thirds of the film are steeped in stereotypes and easy dramatic irony jokes.  It's very '90s VHS comedy.  I honestly could imagine having rented this at the Meijer video rental section while on vacation and finding it charming, if completely forgettable.  The final third reads as a short story of how an auto mechanic could solve a murder mystery only using tire treads.  And that final third is polished.

So what's my problem with the first two thirds besides the fact that comedies about lazy stereotypes don't often resonate with me?  The movie offers us a conceit:  Vinny Gambini has a talent for arguing, but is terrible in a courtroom because he's never actually tried a case.  To save these two boys' lives, he's going to have to get his act together, put his ego on the shelf, and learn about what it means to be a lawyer, despite whatever challenges go his way.  But that's not what those first two-thirds are about, despite what Vinny tells us.  If anything, Vinny keeps failing upwards.  No matter what he does, the judge dings him with contempt of court because Vinny doesn't know what he's doing.  It's played as a gag.  And it's a cute gag.  But one of the things about jokes is that they have to serve the narrative.  The external conflict for the story is that Vinny is a fish out of water in a world that wants to see him fail.  That's a great story.  Keep that.  But Vinny's internal conflict is that he is so stuck in his ways that he is going to have to degrade himself to become something better.  And, you know what?  He does.  But none of the degredation happens through Vinny welcoming those moments.  Instead, things happen in spite of Vinny's poor behavior.  I want to see him sitting in on other trials.  I want to see him taking notes.  I want to see Mona Lisa distracting him and him deciding to read that law book front to back.  It's actually absolutely bizarre that the movie ends and it seems like Vinny hasn't finished that book.  You gave me this specific Chekhov's gun and the answer can be found in the first few pages?  

I actually find Mona Lisa a far more compelling protagonist in this story.  One of the things that drives my point home about how uninvested Vinny is in these boys' worlds is that Mona Lisa, out of sheer boredom, decides to read the Alabama law statues and is able to cite things that Vinny should absolutely know before he goes into a courtroom.  Vinny, compounding his selfish attitude, tells her to stop reading the book because his ego can't handle it.  It's not that I don't think that Vinny should win this case.  I do.  The issue is that everything in the movie kept telling me that Vinny wasn't doing the work and, somehow, the third act makes him a skilled and nuanced defense attorney.  That final act is perhaps the most unearned final act I've seen in a movie.  Vinny just becomes good.  None of the moments in the story lead up to that.  If anything, his boorishness works in his favor.  Sure, there is a truth that Vinny's cultural values might throw some good ol' boys for a loop and that should be played up.  But the obstacle of the story just goes away and that drives me crazy.  Tying back to my commentary on Mona Lisa, she's the one who saves the day.  

That actually drives a hole through my big "The Third Act" praise.  It isn't Mona Lisa, the one who is actually working hard on the case and is a car savant, who discovers the loophole in the prosecution's case; it's Vinny.  Now, one thing that I will give the story.  One of his estabished traits in the movie is that he's observant.  We get that whole story from Bill that Vinny takes down magicians at parties, revealing the truth behind every illusion.  But the revelation of such a bit of obscure trivia flew by a bunch of forensic experts, including Mona Lisa, to fall into Vinny's lap?  That's great, but that beat absolutely belongs to Mona Lisa.  If anything, Mona Lisa is going against character.  I respect that she is willing to throw Vinny out onto the street because he's a bit of a sleezeball.  But her entire motivation is to help Bill and Stan.  Yet, in the third act, to make the story about Vinny, she has to be treated as a hostile witness?  It makes little sense.  I get the idea of being cold to Vinny.  But to leave Bill and Stan up for the chair, a concept the movie doubles down on throughout the film.  It just seems so odd.  

I swear I'm not trying to high horse the movie, but the salvation of the movie is right there.  While I seem mostly annoyed by Vinny Gambini and the whole shortcutting of characters, Marisa Tomei's Mona Lisa is actually kind of a fun take on stereotypes.  Don't get me wrong.  She's doing a lot with that voice.  But Mona Lisa takes the notion of cold, self-involved Brooklynite and not only dispels that stereotype, but grows beyond that point.  If my big complaint is that Vinny should be dynamic when he's actually static, I'm impressed what Tomei does with this part to make her far more compelling.

Yeah, the stereotypes bother me.  I don't love the notion that judges are that far biased against people in his courtroom that he hunts down reasons to throw Vinny in jail.  If anything, there are no other characters besides Vinny and Mona Lisa in this movie.  Everyone else is playing some degree of setting rather than actual characterization.  Still, I get it.  It's 1992.  It's played for laughs.  I just...didn't find myself laughing very often.  I wasn't trying to be a stick in the mud.  I just didn't find much all that funny to laugh at.  The one joke that got me was the running gag of being woken up at 5:00.  I liked that.  I also liked the payoff that Vinny can only sleep with consistent noise.  That bit worked.  But as a whole, this movie...isn't funny.  I wanted it to be.  But it wasn't.