March 8
1627.) I’m very proud to be scaling the heights of brilliance on the Funhouse but every so often you have to descend to the depths of silliness. And there is certainly no lower you can go than Mickey Rooney’s The Godmothers (1973). I call it Rooney’s film because he stars and cowrote the script and reportedly recruited a producer to get this thing off the ground. (The director’s next film was the amazing Impulse with Shatner.) The film is a burlesque-level parody of The Godfather that finds Rooney and Jerry Lester (TV’s first late-night host, from “Broadway Open House”) playing moron mafia hitmen who get roped in by a Don (Frankie Fontaine, “Crazy Guggenheim” on the old Gleason show, decked out like Brando but doing his Gleason character throughout the movie) who wants to marry off his fat daughter. There are fat jokes galore and jokes about the mob and many, many jokes about the fact that Mickey and Jerry decide to dress as women to infiltrate the engagement party — and then they do it again and again and… And if that ain’t dated-comedy enough for ya, Mickey reprises his Japanese impression from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (with Jerry also doing an accent and wearing prop teeth). It’s the goofiest damned thing ever, and its attempts at comedy leave one very hungry, although all-around legendary little person Billy Barty ends up coming off the best as the fearsome hitman known as “the Hawk.” And there’s a terrible “Italianate” song in the middle, which Mickey cowrote, which makes the film seem like a worse version of a Duke Mitchell pic.
