Stereotyped ‘Kiss Me, Guido’ avoids tough issues, risks

KISS ME, GUIDO, written and directed by Tony Vitale, running time: 89 minutes. Rated R for sexuality, adult content, and language. Showing nightly, Oct. 13-16, at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

Two of the featured actors in Tony Vitale’s “Kiss Me, Guido” are so dense, so steeped in Italian-American stereotype, you sense that within their DNA strands must lay the dark and brooding genes of John Gotti, Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, and King Kong. I’m referring to Nick Scotti and Anthony DeSando, who play brothers Frankie and Pino, two men so brazenly masculine, they bleed iron ore.

The film follows Frankie (Scotti), a good-looking pizza cook from the Bronx who aspires to leave his family’s business and move to Manhattan where he hopes to start a new career as an actor. The problem is that Frankie has very little money, and never will be able to afford the rent in Manhattan without a roommate. Thus, he peruses the roommate ads in an alternative weekly newspaper, and mistakenly — unbelievably — decides that “GWM” stands for “guy with money.”

The GWM in question is Warren (Anthony Barrile), a fussy, effeminate gay actor who is so high strung, so high maintenance, there isn’t a chemical substance strong enough that could cut through the invisible tethers that suspend him and bring him down to a manageable level. He is the very worst kind of gay stereotype in that he lisps and whines, stamps his feet and carries on endlessly. When he meets Frankie, he is predictably and dramatically appalled, stating that he will not room with a Stallone-loving, gold necklace-wearing Guido from the boroughs. Still, being several months behind in his rent, Warren knows he has little choice: his landlady has threatened to throw him out if he doesn’t come up with some cash, which Frankie happens to have.

What ensues is predictable, silly slapstick with no substance as Frankie tackles his homophobia by taking the lead part in a gay play, which was supposed to have starred Warren, who hurt his ankle.

“Kiss Me, Guido” is so plot-driven, so reliant on its rampant stereotypes and on our willingness to put up with its shortcomings, it fails on nearly every account. Writer and director Vitale is not smart enough — nor witty enough — to pull this project off. He has taken what amounts to a 30-minute television pilot and stretched it into 89 minutes of mediocre filmmaking. There are some funny moments here, but the premise is so lame, you find yourself wishing that Vitale had looked harder at his script and taken some real risks.

For example, how much more interesting this film would have been had Frankie known going into that apartment that GWM meant “gay white male.” Suddenly, we’re dealing with real tension, real fear, real consequences, qualities this film avoids entirely. Grade: D

Video of the Week

Mother, directed by Albert Brooks and written by Brooks and Monica Johnson. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (With the exception of the food Mrs. Henderson serves her son, nothing is truly offensive here).

“Mother’s” Beatrice Henderson (Debbie Reynolds) might not be the mother of the year, but when compared to Medea, who killed her children, Joan Crawford, who beat her children, and Patsy Ramsey, who exploited her daughter, JonBenet, Mother Henderson comes out a sly, manipulative winner in this wonderful comedy of Oedipal angst.

Beatrice is the mother to John (Albert Brooks), a whiny, middle-aged science fiction writer who has suffered several failed relationships with women. Feeling that his inability to maintain healthy relationships stems from the fact that he was never close to his mother, John comes up with the brilliant idea of moving back home. He reclaims his old bedroom, redecorates it just as it was when he was a teen-ager, and settles in to figure out why Beatrice resents him.

It’s easy for us to see why. John is a bundle of neuroses. Sulky and childlike, bitter and unhappy, he is at his most difficult when trying to deal with the closeness Beatrice shares with his younger brother, Jeff (Rob Morrow). Of course John comes to terms with his mother, but only after some inspired sparring that results in his seeing her as an individual, accepting her for her faults, and realizing that he has several faults of his own.

Reynolds ended a 25-year hiatus from film to play Beatrice, and she is very good here. Gone is the sweet bounciness that made her a star at MGM, and won her notice in the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.” In its place, another woman has evolved who is far more interesting, deeper, and real. “Mother suffers from a slow start, but it is well worth your time. Grade: B

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.