Tired of being disrespected in her day-to-day life, an Italian American mom discovers she’s tougher than she thought when her estranged grandfather dies, leaving her to manage his criminal operation.

by Peter Debruge

In her own home, Italian American working mom Kristin Balbano Jordan (Toni Collette) is hardly the boss. When her deadbeat hubby isn’t cheating on her, he calls the shots, and her independent-minded son can’t wait to leave for college. At work, her male colleagues undermine her every idea. What Kristin doesn’t realize is that it’s not her destiny to be a doormat. Far from it. Come to find, she’s next in line to run Italy’s well-connected Balbano clan, and though Kristin couldn’t have imagined she was heir to an organized crime family, taking charge amounts to an offer she can’t refuse.

A fun fish-out-of-water farce with “Godfather” DNA and a clever female-empowerment kick, “Mafia Mamma” makes inspired use of Collette, who’s never better than when playing women we oughtn’t to have underestimated. Here, using stiletto heels to brutally stab a rival clan’s top assassin, first in the crotch and then in the face, demonstrates that Kristin’s better suited to the job than her enemies could have imagined. While such a graphic scene may come as a shock in a movie that’s more “Under the Tuscan Sun” than “Scarface” (“He had bits of his scrotum stuffed in his eye socket,” reports Monica Bellucci as Bianca, Kristin’s seen-it-all consiglieri), it more than proves that Donna Balbano deserves some respect.

That’s almost certainly the quality that attracted director Catherine Hardwicke to the material, as Michael J. Feldman and Debbie Jhoon’s screenplay peppers the situational humor with comments like “Never let the man dictate who you are or what you can do” — a fine sentiment, but there is no man trying to do either in this script, just a pathetic husband (Tim Daish) looking to ride Kristin’s coattails to Italy. From Kristin’s perspective, the point of the trip may be to attend her estranged grandfather’s funeral, but it’s also a much-needed excuse to cut loose. She hasn’t had sex in three years and literally swoons over the first handsome Italian she sees at the airport, a freshly divorced pasta chef named Fabrizio (Eduardo Scarpetta).

Hardwicke, who comes to the project with such credits as “Thirteen” and “Twilight” to her name, is slightly out of her element directing comedy, but Collette’s a natural in that department, amplifying the character’s gullibility for laughs. At a sit-down with Carlo Romano (Giuseppe Zeo), head of the rival Romano family, Kristin — who thinks she’s inheriting a wine business — mistakes high-stakes territory negotiations for flirtation and tipsily follows him back to his room for a poisoned shot of limoncello. Collette is it all giggles and googly eyes as Kristin endearingly tries too hard to get a little action. While her goombah bodyguards (Alfonso Perugini and Francesco Mastroianni) are otherwise distracted, she accidentally kills the guy who’s trying to murder her.

Had the helmer and star leaned just a little less heavily into Kristin’s eager “Eat, pray, fuck!” mantra (a joke repeated three too many times), the result might have passed for a family-friendly Touchstone movie, à la “Sister Act” or “Sweet Home Alabama.” Good on them that they opted for a more grown-up approach. “Mafia Mamma” isn’t shy about celebrating a middle-aged woman’s libido, the way other movies are, rewarding Kristin’s desires by fulfilling her pasta chef fantasy amid otherwise broad and slapstick jokes — as when Kristin brings a briefcase of fresh-baked muffins to a tense meet-up between the Balbano and Romano capos.

A million same-samey Mafia movies have taught us the codes of Italian organized crime families. Kristin does things differently, and that can be a source of amusement as well as confusion. In a cute (if entirely too neat) montage, she brings her experience marketing pharmaceuticals in the States to a new venture creating a black market for low-priced prescriptions drugs. As for the Balbanos’ wine operation, the dreck they bottle is all but undrinkable — a cover for their illegal dealings. Kristin’s kind of a lush, which translates into an instant aptitude for oenology, tweaking the formula for instant results.

Kristin claims never to have watched the “Godfather” movies, but in a way, with Bianca’s help, she accomplishes what Michael Corleone never could: After assuming control of the family, she manages to make it legitimate. To paraphrase the classic Coppola saga, in mafia country, women are more dangerous than shotguns. While Collette plays the premise for laughs, it’s about time we saw how women might run such an organization.