My Blue Heaven (1990)

Directed by Herbert Ross. Starring Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Joan Cusack, Bill Irwin, Melanie Mayron, Deborah Rush, William Hickey, Carol Kane, Daniel Stern. [PG-13]

Off-center, sometimes shapeless crime comedy where a wiseguy (Martin) under Witness Protection continues his shady antics below the radar of the straight-arrow federal agent (Moranis) assigned to keep tabs on him. Martin’s mobster is a broad caricature, managing inconsistent laughs at best, but a few of the situations and genre parodies are humorous enough on balance. The stereotypes get old after a while, though, and Moranis never generates much chemistry with Cusack’s humorless local district attorney, who just wants to throw the habitual crook in jail. Screenplay by Nora Ephron, whose husband, Nicholas Pileggi, was working with Martin Scorsese at the same time on a different gangster film, GoodFellas (Martin’s character is even liberally inspired by Henry Hill, the real-life figure at the center of the latter film).

60/100