Film Review: Mail Order Bride (Now available on DVD!)
Reviewed by Kayt (Edited slightly from original review run in
March 2003 issue)
DVD Release Date: February 22, 2005 by Monarch Home Video
Starring:
Danny Aiello, Robert Capelli, Jr., Vincent Pastore, Artie Lang, Jackie the Jokeman
Martling, Ivana Milicevic and more.
Featuring: All music by Red Elvises and cameo appearance by them too!
Red Elvises fans now have a new cinematic reason to be happy, with the release of "Mail Order
Bride" on DVD! It was made several years ago but until now only saw the light of day at film
festivals (well, not exactly Sundance but the American Film Market Film Festival's not too shabby...)
and was sold for theatrical release in, I believe, Iraq, of all places. But now it is, at
long last, available on DVD and joins "Six-String Samurai" in Red Elvises' repertoire of
movies that feature a soundtrack full of their very own music as well as a cameo by band members.
I was lucky enough to see "Mail Order Bride" twice in early 2003 at the American Film Market
Film Festival screening in Santa Monica, California, along with Igor, Oleg, Avi, Schramm and others; the
director and lead actor, Robert Capelli, Jr. were there as well so it was as good as any
Hollywood premiere -- the closest I'll come to one, anyway. After seeing it I wrote a
review for the March 2003 issue of The Red Pages, which is provided here in slightly briefer form to
give everyone an idea of what you're getting if you buy this DVD.
“Mail Order Bride” is...funny and well paced and generally a rollicking good time can be had by
watching it. The acting is solid (Danny Aiello, can't go wrong there!) and the characters are likeable. Robert Capelli, Jr.in
particular...is a young actor to watch - he should have a career full of good things because
not only is he a very good actor but also a really nice guy. The film was screened in late February
as part of the American Film Market film festival, ironically at a theatre on Santa Monica’s
3rd Street Promenade where Our Favorite Band got their start performing in the street.
The story involves the Italian-American Mafia and the Russian Mafia, but not in any
dead-serious way. It’s a very funny comedy, played for laughs to the hilt. Having lived
in New York for a few years myself in the past, the scenes where the Italian guys walked
through a room full of other Brooklyn Italian guys and each and every one greeted them in
turn with, “How YOU dooin’?” like a chorus of “How YOU Dooin’?” over and over again, really
cracked me up. I was surprised to have never heard of an area of Brooklyn called Little
Odessa (fictional? yes? no?), but then I hadn’t met any Russian people yet when I lived there so I was
unenlightened back then. The accents, both Brooklyn and Russian, are easy to understand
and there are some simple subtitles for the Russian that most of us don’t understand.
The subtitles are easy reading and are not overdone, there are just enough to help our
understanding, and we’re on our own with easily understandable words like “da” (yes) and
“spasibo” (thank you) in places where context alone is sufficient to express the idea.
Since I’m not a big fan of subtitles myself but do enjoy the richness of languages other
than English, I found the few subtitles to be both refreshing and helpful. Visually, it was
really nice to see shots of Red Square and quite interesting to see other
parts of Moscow as our hero raced through the streets during a high-speed chase.
So…basically the plot is that this beautiful and sexy Russian girl, Nina, has pulled a
scam to the tune of $50,000 on a member of the Italian-American Mafia, who naturally wants
some sort of retribution. It seems this girl has come over to New York from Russia and
pulled a get-the-money-and-run scam a few times before returning to Russia, in the process betraying
the wrong guy. It’s decided, in a hilarious phone call full of miscommunication between a
Russian Mafia guy and the head of the Italian-American Mafia, that the latter’s lovable
screw-up of a nephew, Anthony, played charmingly by Robert Capelli, Jr., will be sent to
Russia to find the girl and get the money back. He is sent along with Ivan, the son of the
head guy of the Russian Mafia, to protect him in Russia. They get off the plane at the airport
in Moscow with Ivan complaining bitterly about the plane running out of vodka, an unheard-of
and to him, unforgivable, incident. Together, at first, the two of them start to search for
Nina, a search that takes them to Russia’s finest bars and strip joints, and the fun takes off
from there. There’s romance, double crossing, crime, more double crossing, a little
partial nudity and an accidental gunshot in a tender place, complete with a truly
funny scene involving “the best doctor in all of Russia” – a white-haired character expertly
portrayed by veteran American actor Frank Gorshin. The music is of course, terrific, fits great
with the story and includes “Natasha Loves Reggae [Reviewer's note: the original title of
the song "Winter Reggae" which appears on the 2004 CD "Lunatics and Poets"],” the Russian
version of “Rocket Man” and many other Red Elvises songs. At the end, our guys play at a party
and are seen onscreen for way too few seconds since most of that scene unfortunately ended up
being edited out of the film. But we see a flash of Oleg’s extremely red hair and trademark grin, and we see
Igor on drums all too briefly and then the scene fades to black and the end credits
roll. Overall, the entire film moves along nicely; there are no slow or boring parts,
and I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable.
I forgot to mention in the original review that in addition to being shot in Russia, the film was
a joint effort of Russians and Americans and should be heralded for showing such strong
international unity in addition to being such an entertaining movie! If you go to the
Internet Movie Database (IMDB) website and search for
"Mail Order Bride" under Titles you can see the cast and crew and even read a review by
someone outside of fandom, and there are enough Russian names there to
populate a small town in Siberia. So if it's an authentic Russian-American film effort you're
looking for, look no further. I really think you'll enjoy “Mail Order Bride,” because America is ready for and deserves to see
another movie with music by Red Elvises!
Ordering info: Go to Amazon.com and search by DVD for the title "Mail Order Bride." (Also
available on VHS but at a higher price and much longer delivery time). It should probably also
be available wherever fine DVDs are sold, so check your local retailers. Enjoy!
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