Movie of the Week: Friends and Romans

Alexa: I think Joel is absolutely right in his assessment that for most people “Friends and Romans” is an average movie, and that’s definitely the case for me. I enjoyed it and don’t regret the time I spent watching it, but I haven’t thought about it much since and I’m not likely to watch it again. It was the perfect way to spend roughly an hour and a half of my holiday break while curled up on the couch. The film’s concept of mob movie extras breaking through typecasting barriers by mounting a Shakespeare production is a clever one, and I honestly would have liked it more if that’s all it was. The plotline with an actual mobster infiltrating the cast adds more conflict, but it distracts from the film’s central premise. For me, the struggle of whether or not the actors can pull this show off successfully is compelling enough on its own. “Friends and Romans” makes some excellent points about how often Italian Americans are stereotyped in popular culture, but it also suffers from leaning into those very stereotypes too much at times, which unfortunately undermines its central message. But overall the movie does have a lot of heart and a great cast, particularly the charming Michael Rispoli in the lead role. I hope to see him in more non-mobster projects going forward.

Joel: For most people, this is going to be a three star movie. Nothing that’s going to change their lives, but a sweet little movie. It has a cute idea, likeable characters and enough funny moments that you’ll enjoy the time you spend watching the movie. It’s a three star movie for me as well, except for the fact that I happen to be a sucker for stories about theater, and putting on shows, especially at a local level like the guys are doing in this movie. Usually when you have people “put on a show” in a story, it’s very much glossed over what all goes into getting a project from idea to stage. I’m not arguing that this is a completely accurate, overly detailed representation of what goes on (the actual mob part of this mob movie still takes up a great deal) and a lot of what the movie does go into detail about is either completely wrong, or at least wildly exaggerated in one direction or another for sake of the story, but there is a lot of screen time dedicated to the idea of “putting on a show.” The movie even gets to do this on a few extra levels by having the high school production subplot of the movie as well. Most of the movie is like that for me. Yeah it’s kind of funny to see people do a woefully misguided audition, but having been in auditions where I’ve seen that very thing happen, it feels like more of a knockout to me than it probably should be. It feels like the movie gets me, and for that I’m willing to give it a little more love.

Chris: I loved the idea for this movie. I've wanted to review this movie months ago when I read the summary for Friends and Romans and I thought it would be fun and interesting. For the most part, that was correct but I wish Friends and Romans kept it that simple. I could've done without the actual mobster in-hiding story and replace that with more of the daughter storyline and the teacher that believes the main character is a mobster because it feels like that was mostly dropped for the majority of the movie. All-in-all, I would've liked Friends and Romans to have focused more on the play, it's production and the performance rather than all the side stuff happening. I enjoyed Friends and Romans but it has it's flaws.