JFF: What Was the Last Film You Saw, and How Would You Rate It? (Pt. 19)

“My Cousin Vinny” is a great courtroom comedy movie, in fact a great courtroom movie tout court.  (9/10)

 Two students are accused of murdering a store clerk in a small Alabama town. Being from New York, they react with all the worst clichés about the South, fearing KKK lynching, inbred sons and ancestral hatred against the Yankees, making them even more stereotypical. One of them (Ralph Macchio) calls his Brooklyn lawyer cousin Vincent Gambini aka Vinny for help. Vinny (Joe Pesci) comes to the rescue along with his sexy and beautiful fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei).

So we get the flashy New York born-and-raised couple dealing with the humbler but no less peculiar mentalities of a small Southern town. There’s more, Vinny’s also a small-time lawyer who passed the bar exam in extremis after a sixth attempt and kept chasing ambulances after. Vinny must make his bones and learn from scratch in a case where his cousin’s life is at stakes, the judge doesn’t seem to like him, so the pressure is big... and as patient and helpful as Lisa tries to be, she doesn’t help when she kindly reminds him that she’s also submitted to pressures of her own (on a biological level).

 A new viewer might get the feeling that the botched investigation and the trial are just excuses to generate stereotype-ridden laughs based on the fish-out-the-water element. But as you let the film grow on you, you realize it’s actually the other way round.

I actually believe the comedy is the starting point of a rigorous and insightful exploration of the subtleties of the legal system in general and Alabama in particular. It might be an open-and-shut case for an experienced lawyer but then there would be no movie; no, it’s crucial to have a lawyer who still has to learn the ropes so we learn with him. When Mona Lisa tells him that he’s got nothing to brag about getting files from the prosecutor since it’s the latter’s job, there would be a vice of form otherwise. It’s funny but at least that won’t be forgotten, not by Vinny, not by us. And that’s one example.

 “My Cousin Vinny” shows how to deal with an expert witness, how to make a cross examination, how to create a reasonable doubt, how to psychologically handle witnesses and experts, but you know that comes rather late in the film and I guess watching the first part fills the first-time viewer with an urge to see Vinny taking off his amateur clothes and Mona Lisa Vito eventually shine and outshine everyone. But before, we’ve got to come through the two kids indirectly confessing their crime, thinking they’ve been caught for a non-paid tuna can, we get a series of running gags involving Vinny’s impossibility to get a good nightsleep, his procedural interplays with Judge Chamberlain Haller (Fred Gwynne) who takes his job so seriously he holds him in contempt because he can’t even say “guilty” or “not guilty” and many other subplots.

So what we get in the first part is pure comedy routine. Yes, it’s funny but in a predictable way. But director Jonathan Lynn who had a law degree insisted that the film would be the most accurate in its depiction of trial strategy, with its share of attacks and counter-attacks. He knows what he’s doing and prepares us for a big finale. So we laugh with Joe Pesci being his usual loud and annoyingly raucous guy, Gwynne the ‘straight man’ whose facial reactions make for one good third of the laughs and we even get the lousy yet hilarious gag of a stuttering lawyer, (which still serves to make a point: never ask a witness a question if you’re not prepared for the answer).

By the time we get to the climax, the film at least reassures us that it didn’t care much for stereotypes, they’re downplayed to nihil, Vinny stops being a clown and accomplishes his job fairly decently, with growing confidence, using his street smarts and proving that he has the makings of a great lawyer. Pesci is truly given one of his best roles for three reasons: he’s the lead for once, he’s as loud and foul-mouthed as his usual roles, but he’s smart and he’s a good guy who wants to do his job. And yet, that’s not even the film’s secret weapon, in a nutshell, it’s a bombshell.

 Anyone who didn’t see the film knows it earned Marisa Tomei an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and “supporting” is the word considering her man. But the way she saves the day at the end through her car expertise (pointed out early enough so it doesn’t come down as a Deus Ex Machina) is brilliant, intelligent, insightful, funny and even romantic (Pesci and Tomei had quite a chemistry). And it’s beautiful acting from Marisa Tomei whose reaction shots were already gold during the trial but look at her after she answers the trick question leaving the prosecutor, as deflated as a tire, the look she gives the judge was enough for the Oscar.

 The film was the third of 25 legal films voted the best by the American Bar Association, which says a lot about its accuracy. According to experts, it not only shows what they teach you in school but what they don’t, which is where Vinny is the best, being wise, charming, funny but sharp and cutting when it comes to counterattack feeble testimonies, using mathematical precision and pure logic to turn eyewitnesses’ own arguments against them, and teach the jury not to judge on appearances.

And if there’s anything to learn from that movie is not to judge on appearances. Indeed,  behind seemingly hostile Southerners, there are decents folks doing their jobs and eager to cooperate, behind a loudmouthed crook-like New Yorker, there can be a great lawyer, behind a sexy gal dressed like Fran Fine, there’s a car expert. And maybe behind a great courtoom comedy, there is one of the best films about... cars.