‘Mickey Blue Eyes’ premise proves faulty, indecisive

“MICKEY BLUE EYES.” Directed by Kevin Makin. Written by Adam Scheinman and Robert Kuhn. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Here’s an offer Hugh Grant should have refused: appearing in “Mickey Blue Eyes,” an “engaged-to-the-mob” movie whose script is full of blanks.

The film stars Grant as Michael Felgate, an English art dealer who runs funny and talks funnier, but that’s just because Grant plays him as an English stereotype.

The film’s premise, unquestionably conceived around the supposed hilarity of Grant’s prim character trying to feign a tough Brooklyn accent (what a knee-slapper that turns out to be), is doggerel: Michael’s girlfriend Gina (Jeanne Tripplehorn) doesn’t want to marry him because of her mob family, a bunch of grunting, Italian-American stereotypes from Central Casting who make the characters of “Donnie Brasco” and “The Godfather” seem downright eloquent.

Gina’s fear? If Michael marries into the family, he’ll also be sucked into the mob by her father (James Caan), a tiny glitch that Michael chooses to overlook in a film that chooses to overlook what it wants to be — a romantic comedy, a suspense thriller, or a bizarre combination of both.

On the heels of “Analyze This” and the HBO series “The Sopranos,” “Mickey Blue Eyes” is a pale contender, a cinematic stiff that washes up in theaters in hopes its audience will view it through rose-colored glasses.

Grade: Fuhgeddaboutit

“TEACHING MRS. TINGLE,” Written and directed by Kevin Williamson. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated: PG-13.

Timing really is everything.

Smack in the middle of a culture jolted by the sharp rise in high school violence, and only days before schools open, writer and director Kevin Williamson (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Scream,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer”) delivers “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” a film about a vile, mean-spirited history teacher (Helen Mirren) who plots to destroy her students, and the three unlikeable students who eventually attack her.

Much of this is more benign than it sounds.

In spite of Mirren’s fun and often bitchy turn as the wonderfully cruel Mrs. Tingle (her calculating restraint is as powerful as Elizabeth Taylor’s flamboyant, narcissistic rage in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”), Williamson ultimately puts Mirren’s formidable talent straight into detention hall.

In a sluggish movie that’s desperate for the measure of depth the actress easily could have given it, Williamson is content to only let her be a caricature, never the fully realized witch she could have become, which harms a movie that could have used a tutor (read: script doctor) to truly make it work.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith’s “The Week in Rewind” appears each Thursday in the scene. Each Tuesday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in Cinema Center.