“The Family” Reviews Summary

“The Family” is showing in the US for two weeks now and making fair result in the box office, but surprisingly, or disappointingly, ratings from Critics are much lower than expected with big names of director Luc Besson, actors Robert De niro, Michelle, Tommy Lee Jones, plus executive producer Martin Scorsese…a short summary of critics reviews about Michelle’s performance is here, with both good and bad comments…but then, at the end, who cares?! As long as the audiences and Pfans love it and enjoy the movie, it can still be one of our BEST Pfeiffer Movie!

• Michelle Pfeiffer, who of course knows a thing or two about playing someone married to the mob, looks amazing and somehow manages to create empathy for a character who has committed so many sins she frightens and shocks the priest who hears her confessions. – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times.com
• A characteristically sharp Pfeiffer provides most of the pic’s genuine laughs and nearest attempts at actual empathy. – Andrew Barker, Variety
• Pfeiffer is all there. She’s a major film actress, one of the best in the English-speaking world, and it’s our loss as well as hers that she has never gotten the role that would put her in the pantheon with Jessica Lange, et al. Her Maggie could have been an outright caricature (the accent is fromMarried to the Mob), but she grounds every scene. Maggie is brittle and disappointed but relentlessly practical, holding her family together while her husband putters around. She grounds De Niro, too. You feel something intangible when they’re together: They’re in the moment and the moment is rich and full of emotion. – David Edelstein, Vulture
• Michelle Pfeiffer is excellent with her thick Brooklyn accent and gaudy late 70s fashion and hair…However, De Niro and Pfeiffer’s shared screen time is enticing, to say the least. They are a perfect fit, especially as a mob family. Whether they are bickering over a murder or plumbing, they both deliver laughs. But its Pfeiffer’s commanding presence as the diva mob wife that steals the picture. – Justin Craig, FoxNews.com
• The actors, especially Pfeiffer, give the script more than it deserves. But Besson’s leaden touch works against light and airy. The Family is a comic soufflé that never rises. – Peter Traver, Rolling Stone
• Ms. Pfeiffer is no stranger to mob wives, having played them wonderfully in “Married to the Mob” and “Scarface.”Because her portrayal of Maggie has only the slightest tinge of parody, her character feels authentic. When Ms. Pfeiffer tears up, which she does more than once, you weep with her. – Stephen Holden, The New York Times
• Pfieffer is still gorgeous and can still give a terrific performance as she does here, but the people who really stand out are the two children. Agron gives the best performance in the film as a really sexy teenager coming of sexual age and D’Leo is convincing as a manipulative chip off the old block. – Tony Medley, Tolucan Times
• Pfeiffer’s even better, as Maggie works her way through her perpetual anger and frustration in an effort to hold the family together. – Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing
• But it’s Pfeiffer who steals the show. This shouldn’t be all that surprising, since she’s been great in the past (especially as the spouse of mobsters), but has been mostly AWOL from the big screen for almost a decade. Truthfully, you can almost see Maggie as an older Angela de Marco from Married to the Mob: world-weary and jaded but still loyal and fiercely protective of her own. That, and she sets things on fire when she’s angry…I guess when we get down to it, Pfeiffer’s performance is what nudges The Family into the “recommended” category. – Pete Vonder Haar, Houston Press

• De Niro and Pfeiffer are, likewise, good sports when it comes to how they riff on their screen legacies in The Family, while at the same time fleshing out their own characters so that they feel three-dimensional enough (within the context of the film’s universe). – Sandy Schaefer, ScreenRant
• Pfeiffer, too, gives a likably nostalgic performance, digging deep in her closet of accents to slip back on an Upper-Jersey, Married to the Mob soprano (the vocal pitch, not the family). – Christopher Orr, The Atlantic
• Revisiting her previous turns in “Scarface” and “Married to the Mob,” Michelle Pfeiffer seems to have perfected an empathetic take on the brittle gangster parody. – Susan Granger, SSG Syndicate
• Pfeiffer’s performance is the reason to see the film, though. Calling back her show-stopping turn in “Married to the Mob,” her Maggie is both supportive and bored out of her mind, yearning towards her old Catholic faith but unrepentant about blowing stuff up. She cooks at the stove, her hair in gigantic curlers. She kneels in church, praying to Jesus with earnest eyes. Pfeiffer has been very good in dramatic material, but she might be a comedienne at heart. There’s one scene near the end of “The Family” where events are coming to a boil, buildings are exploding, and she crawls across the floor as quickly as she can clutching a gigantic kitchen knife. Her eyes are manic, wild, and yet also focused, like an assassin’s. – Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com
• Pfeiffer appears funny throughout. Maybe her prior role in Married to the Mob paid off. – Diana Saenger, ReviewExpress.com
• Robert De Niro as a gangster is legendary and no one can compare. It was nice to see Pfeiffer as the Italian boss’ wife, a solid return. Great chemistry from the cast and the thrilling action made it entertaining for all. – Jolene Mendez, Entertainment Spectrum
• De Niro is always good in a role such as this one. He could play it in his sleep. Opposite him Pfeiffer seems to be replaying her role in “Married To the Mob.” Still she is such a talented actress I could and would watch her in anything. – Jackie K Cooper, jackiekcooper.com
• De Niro, still able to surprise us (as in “Silver Linings Playbook”), could play Gio in his sleep, yet appears to be itching for something meatier. He and Pfeiffer — now as ever one of the great screen beauties — have a nice scene as they canoodle on a couch. Other than that, her “dese-dems-doze” accent grates and he looks tired. – Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

• Pfeiffer gets to break out her old Married to the Mob persona as the fierce (and fearsome) Maggie, the long-suffering wife who will do literally anything to protect her family. Her chemistry with De Niro is impeccable, two screen veterans who have been in a pair of movies together before but never shared a single scene. The wait was worth it. When they are together, whether it’s arguing over pasta or sharing an intimate moment, the film really pops. – Travis Hopson, Examiner.com
• That’s particularly disappointing for De Niro and Jones, who are no strangers to bad films but had happily returned to the Oscar spotlight earlier this year. For Pfeiffer it’s just another reminder that she deserves better material than she’s been granted lately. – Geoff Berkshire, HitFix
• Pfeiffer has perfected a very convincing aura of icy menace, and shows off an ingratiating loose side in a funny marijuana scene. She even resurrects her Married to the Mob hairstyle in flashbacks. – Daniel Eagan, Film Journal
• Michelle Pfeiffer is the best she’s been in years as De Niro’s supportive and vindictive wife. – Mack Rawden, CINEMABLEND.COM
• Michelle Pfeiffer giving an endearing and well-rounded performance as De Niro’s patient wife, who’s a devoted mother and a great cook. – Leonard Maltin, Indiewire

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