Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
In the Mix comes described as an “edgy romantic comedy,” which I guess is a romantic comedy in which people shoot at each other. Our star-crossed lovers are club DJ Darrell (R&B star Usher) and Mafia princess Dolly (adorable Emmanuelle Chriqui); they’ve known each other all their lives, but, you know, not in that way. Darrell’s late father was a trusted employee of Dollie’s daddy Frank (Chazz Palminteri), the mob boss of New Jersey. Frank hires Darrell to DJ a party, which proves fortuitous when a rival attempts a hit on him and Darrell takes the bullet in his shoulder.
It’s only a flesh wound, and Darrell quickly recuperates in Frank’s spacious McMobsion. Given the potential mob war a-brewing, Frank is unwilling to let Dolly leave the house without protection, but Dolly refuses to be accompanied by one of his goons. (Frank is perpetually surrounded by a cast of goombahs who might have finally made it onto The Sopranos if the show had run seventeen seasons; Robert Costanzo IS Fat Tony!)
That leaves it to Darrell to chauffeur Dolly around, and soon enough the old friends are playing tonsil hockey. This doesn’t sit well with Frank and the boys when they find out, so they decide to knock some sense into Darrell by having Fat Tony dunk his head several times in the pool. See, these are lovable mobsters! Except for the two young nitwits who kidnap Darrell and Dolly in order to lure Frank into a trap, so they can kill him and take over the crew. It all works out, though, when Darrell takes another bullet, finally winning Frank over. Hey, any asshole can take one bullet for you, right? But two? Ayyyy, gabbagool!
Directed by genial hack Ron Underwood (City Slickers, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and I don’t actually know that he’s genial, he just looks that way in his IMDb photos), In the Mix is at least competent in a straight-to-video sort of way, which, along with Chriqui’s million dollar smile, should probably be enough to disqualify it from Unwatchable consideration. If I had to guess why it ended up on the list, I would be inclined to place the blame on the character of Dolly’s brother Frankie Jr. (Anthony Fazio), an incredibly annoying wigger in the hiz-zayyy who somehow makes it through the entire movie without being beaten to death by either Usher or Palminteri. For this missed opportunity alone, I award In the Mix two Maurys.
Previously on Unwatchable:
53. Baby Geniuses
54. Meatballs 4
55. A*P*E
56. Araf
57. Phat Girlz
