Mighty Fine

Mighty Fine focuses on a Jewish-American family in the 1970's after they move from Brooklyn into a luxurious new home in New Orleans. The head of the family is Joe Fine, played by veteran actor and one of my favorite leading men Chazz Palminteri, accompanied by his wife Stella (Andie MacDowell), his oldest daughter Madie (Rainey Qualley), and his younger daughter Natalie (Jodelle Ferland). Joe and Stella are beyond excited for this new change - even Natalie, the young writer of the family holds some dearly strong optimism. The one who objects the most is Madie, who sees her father's allegedly kind gesture as an act of inexcusable selfishness as she had to drop everything, leave her friends, and now assimilate to a culture she doesn't remotely hold interest in.

Just when you think this takes over and becomes the facile plot-point of the film, the curve-ball is thrown. We see Joe's descent into madness, with stress at work boiling over his head, family disconnect, and bottled-up rage coming through like never before. He becomes verbally and physically abusive towards his wife and children, threatening violence, embellishing every little mistake, etc. All while Natalie captures her thoughts through diary entries.

Mighty Fine is a semi-autobiographical tale of writer/director Debbie Goodstein's childhood, which was surrounded by success with her writing and heartbreak with her father's mental instability. It's admirable to see that the film never seems to channel the lines of self-indulgence or self-satisfaction. It's surprisingly conducted on a small-scale and never seems overreaching. The film is so small-scale, at times, it feels like a TV pilot - a competent one, at that. We get to know the characters, we see their hardships, then when the credits finally role, we realize we wouldn't really mind seeing them again anytime soon.

However, at seventy-nine minutes, it feels as if Goldstein was handed the runtime prior to shooting and told to make a film that wouldn't go a minute over eighty. Mighty Fine seems to casually go about its runtime for the first forty to forty-five minutes, then rushes to include the plot-points of stress escalation, characters with mental states on the tipping point, suicidal thoughts, fights, etc in the last thirty minutes. The biggest problem is that this is all happening way too quickly, with certain little plot-strands being abandoned right after they're brought up.

Fortunately, Might Fine at least rebounds with its competence and gentle, well-articulated craft of storytelling and focus. The family is given a wide-range or interaction with each other, and Goldstein is essentially filming on an open range with several characters to look at, doing a fine job (or a mighty fine job) of giving them all their own time to shine. This is simple, genial fare, but it remains impressive given its lack of indulgence or mediocrity in tone.

Starring: Chazz Palminteri, Andie MacDowell, Rainey Qualley, and Jodelle Ferland. Directed by: Debbie Goldstein.

The problems with "Mighty Fine" begin with the genre. Let's make this clear, it's not a comedy. There are a few moments and lines at the beginning that aren't as serious and fairly humorous, but it's a drama. The plot quickly devolves into a full-on family drama with serious issues where the characters need to rely on their internal strength to rise above.

Joe Fine (Chazz Palminteri) moves his whole family from Brooklyn to New Orleans in 1974, and literally he moves them since he didn't tell them in advance. Surprise! Oddly most of the characters don't see anything wrong with that. The other main member of the Fine clan is Maddie (Rainey Qualley) she's the one that doesn't think this is quite right and is the only one we can understand, care for and sympathize with. The younger daughter, Natalie (Jodelle Ferland), is fine too but she's much younger and more care free.

The father has money, status and other similar issues. He has a need to provide for his family and if that is ever in jeopardy he becomes increasingly unstable. It unfortunately was probably a common characteristic among war vets of the era. And that's why I have such a problem with this being classified as a comedy. The story probably applies to other families and it's not likely something they want to relive as a light-hearted laugh-fest! I wonder if Adopt Films would be willing to pay for their therapy afterwards? I doubt it.

Now that you're fairly warned about the dramatic issues explored, the teenage daughters were good characters, likable, which is pretty important and the young actresses were good (include Andie MacDowell's daughter Rainey Qualley). Palminteri gives a forceful performance but don't expect him to veer too far from his mobster typecast roots. The poorest realized character was the "mother". That word goes in quotation marks because I feel sorry for anybody who was "raised" by that character. She's not a terrible person, she's just not a person. MacDowell put on a terrible European accent and paraded around the house parroting everything that her unstable, deceitful and volatile husband said. Thankfully "Mighty Fine" is pretty short and eventually the daughters become their own role models.

Who Might Like This: People who like 70s-era family dramas; people who like stories of teenagers finding the internal strength to rise above their circumstances.

I think Mighty Fine is intended to be a coming-of-age drama. It features a voiceover from one of the daughters in the film recounting these things as though she is an older woman now looking back on her past. However, the girls don't do a whole lot in the film and there are many scenes with the father alone because it's really Chazz Palminteri's movie. The main thrust of the story is that this father is a bit crazy and taking it out on his family. The way his moods shift so dramatically it feels like he might be a bit bipolar and he is also struggling with some significant anger issues. I also got the impression that he was spending money a bit too freely, but they never did a good job of showing his financial situation getting the better of him. If that's a key plot point you typically see bill collectors pounding down the door, things being repossessed, or at the very least the main characters agonizing over stacks of unpaid bills. I didn't see any of that in this movie, so I think it failed to deliver the story effectively. IMDb also labels Mighty Fine as a "Comedy" which I can only imagine is because of Andie MacDowell's laughable attempt at an accent. I've heard actors struggle with this kind of language work before, but this accent came and went with each sentence, and always made me chuckle when she overdid it and sounded like the parody of someone from a random European country. The rest of the movie is like a Lifetime drama, and not a good one either. The one positive was that Mighty Fine was short, otherwise it's not worth anyone's time.

I was very surprised to see that Mighty Fine has such a low score on IMDb. I can't figure out why that is. It was a very well done movie, with distinctive characters. Chazz Palminteri was excellent as a loving, but troubled father. Andie MacDowell was better in this movie than I have seen her in other films -- less wooden and her accent is strong and consistent. The actress, Jodelle Ferland, is a beauty -- very similar in looks to Megan Fox. The actress playing the younger sister, Rainey Qualley was quite expressive and consistently good. The ending was somewhat unexpected but satisfying. All in all, it's well worth viewing.

I recently had the opportunity to preview Mighty Fine which hits theaters on May 25th. I loved the movie and the powerful message that it portrays. I recommend it for everyone to see...It does however have strong language, but I guess that was necessary to go along with the father character, played by Chazz Palminteri. You will fall in love with Rainey Qualley, Andie MacDowell's real life daughter, in her debut as Maddie Fine. The movie will leave you emotionally raw as it opens your eyes to a behind the scenes look at emotional abuse. May be hard to watch for those who have experienced abuse in their own lives. Great cast, great movie!!