Nora Ephron Month: My Blue Heaven (1990)
When Nora Ephron was chosen as one of the twelve theme months of the wildly unsuccessful experiment 2020: The Year YOU Control Nathan Rabin, I was not overjoyed. That’s because I was not a fan of the legendary journalist, author, screenwriter and filmmaker.
When I saw When Harry Met Sally when I was thirteen years old I found it overly derivative of the films of Woody Allen, an opinion I have not felt the need to revise or revisit during the ensuing thirty two years.
I hated You Got Mail and found Bewitched to be bewildering. Despite my love of John Travolta, I found Michael to be mediocre at best.
Ephron always struck me as someone who would be absolutely fascinating to talk to and have dinner with but as a filmmaker and creator whose creations left me cold.
One of the wonderful things about life is that it gives you an unending series of opportunities to change your mind, to love something that previously hated or despise something you once held in high regard.
I have accordingly discovered over the past two years or so that I may in fact have been wrong about Ephron all along and now count myself among the beloved comedy icons’ many fans and admirers.
My reappraisal of Ephron’s oeuvre began with a First and Last article I wrote about her little-seen debut, 1992’s This Is My Life and her bifurcated final film, 2009s Julie and Julia. I very much dug This is My Life as a solid, beautifully observed little sleeper and a wonderful showcase for the perfectly cast Julie Kavner and Samantha Mathis and found Julie and Julia to be half of a great film.
I absolutely adored the half of the film devoted to Julia Child finding herself as a chef and a human being in 1950s Paris and despised the half devoted to narcissistic blogger Julie Powell’s infinitely less compelling journey to self-realization as a chef and writer with a white-hot burning passion.
I hated Lucky Numbers’ nastiness when I saw it during its theatrical release and found it laugh out loud funny and gloriously misanthropic upon a rewatch. I had a similar response to Mixed Nuts when I wrote it up for My World of Flops and Nora Ephron Month and now I am similarly happy to announce that I fucking love 1990’s My Blue Heaven, which Ephron wrote and Herbert Ross directed.
My Blue Heaven is so good that I am legitimately gobsmacked as to why it doesn’t have a better reputation. My Blue Heaven isn’t just better than expected: it’s a goddamn delight from start to finish, a wonderful buddy comedy as well as a weirdly perfect companion piece to a film that came out the same year and made slightly more of a cultural impact: Goodfellas.
Ephron was literally and figuratively married to that mob movie in that it’s based on a book and screenplay co-written by her husband Nicholas Pileggi as well as the life of Henry Hill, whose life story inspired both movies.
My Blue Heaven, which was released just a month before Martin Scorsese’s timeless masterpiece, begins where Goodfellas ends, with a career criminal based on Henry Hill wasting away in suburbia as part of the Witness Protection Program after agreeing to rat on a number of his low-life associates.
The difference is that in this version, the mobster at the center of the film is not a murderous, racist, abusive sociopath addicted to cocaine but rather a lovable scamp who may have larceny in his soul and his DNA but emerges as a strangely cuddly, adorable figure all the same.
In My Blue Heaven, the Henry Hill surrogate is Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli, an undistinguished mafioso who is moved to suburban California by law enforcement in an attempt to keep him alive long enough to testify against his former associates.
Barney Coopersmith (Rick Moranis) has the unenviable task of keeping Vinnie from doing what he loves most: committing crimes.
With his sharkskin suits, Italian loafers and rooster strut, the veteran mobster could not be more conspicuous. He leaves behind a trail of slime everywhere he goes.
The gangster’s handler wants him to keep his head down and maintain a low profile until it is time for him to go to New York to testify on the state’s behalf but Vinnie can’t help but make a gaudy spectacle of himself everywhere he goes.
The juicy role of Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli, New York mobster lost in the sunshine and white picket fences of the West Coast proves a wonderful showcase for Martin’s legendary gift for physical comedy.
Vinnie is a cartoon character, a gleeful caricature of a tacky but irrepressible hooligan with a heart of gold and a surprising sweetness. Being a criminal isn’t something that he does for money; it’s who he is on an existential level. It’s his identity.
So Vinnie immediately sets about polluting the Leave it to Beaver wonderland he finds himself in with low-level criminality. Vinnie has a hustle and a scam for any occasion. This attracts the attention of District Attorney Hannah Stubbs (Joan Cusack) despite Barney’s oft-stated contention that Vinnie is too important to law enforcement to be tossed in the slammer for his many petty crimes even after he becomes a one-man crime wave and begins recruiting fellows mobsters in retirement to help him with his shady endeavors.
Barney is Vinnie’s protector as well as his handler. Moranis and Martin, reuniting after Little Shop of Horrors and Parenthood, have terrific chemistry. Martin is clearly having a ball doing his crazy Steve Martin shtick and the elegantly understated Moranis makes for a terrific straight man.
My Blue Heaven is so light on its feet it practically flies. It’s breezy and effervescent, a joyful lark that looks good and sounds good and moves at a brisk, energetic pace. Cusack is a goddamn delight, as always and just when it seems like the cast can’t get any more perfect Carol Kane enters the proceedings at just the right time as Vinnie’s hot to trot love interest.
Cinematographer John Bailey, whose resume includes Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Groundhog Day and The Kid Stays in the Picture, makes suburbia sparkle. It’s the sunny flip side to Goodfellas’ infinite darkness that makes similarly inspired use of pop music, particularly oldies like Fats Domino’s oft-employed title song, but to much different ends.
I wasn’t just pleasantly surprised by My Blue Heaven. I was blown away by it. It’s always a pleasant shock when a mainstream studio comedy is legitimately funny but My Blue Heaven is much more than funny.
It’s not often that I’ll enter a movie with zero to modest expectations and end up loving it with the entirety of my being. Yet that’s exactly what happened with My Blue Heaven.
It’s so much more than just a kooky footnote to Goodfellas though its tight relationship with one of the most influential and beloved movies of the past fifty years is one of the many fascinating things about it.
The more I see of Ephron’s work the more impressed I become. That’s good because this whole month is dedicated to her and her remarkable and increasingly surprising body of work as a screenwriter and an auteur.
Buy The Weird Accordion to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or from Amazon here
Missed out on the Kickstarter campaign for The Weird A-Coloring to Al/The Weird A-Coloring to Al-Colored In Edition? You’re in luck, because you can still pre-order the books, and get all manner of nifty exclusives, by pledging over at https://the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are NINE so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace