La critique de Roger Ebert
March 13, 1992

“My Cousin Vinny” is a movie that meanders along going nowhere in particular, and then lightning strikes. I didn't get much involved in it, and yet individual moments and some of the performances were very funny. It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth.

The film stars Joe Pesci as a New Yorker who thinks a black knit shirt under a black leather jacket, if set off by a gold chain around the neck, is elegant courtroom attire. He might be right if he were a defendant in the Bronx, but the movie takes place in Alabama, and he's the defense attorney. His cousin (Ralph Macchio) and a friend (Mitchell Whitfield), two innocent college students on their way to school, have been charged with the murder of a convenience store owner. The circumstantial evidence looks damning, but the worst thing they have going against them is Pesci's sweeping lack of legal experience.

Although the film is set in the South and has an early shot of a sign that says “Free Horse Manure,” this is not another one of your Dixie-bashing movies. The judge (Fred Gwynne, his face longer than ever) and prosecutor (Lane Smith) are civilized men who aren't trying to railroad anybody. It's just that after gunshots were heard, three different witnesses made a positive identification on the two suspects, fleeing the store in a distinctive late-1960s Buick convertible.

Pesci, who is the Macchio character's cousin Vinny, has finally passed the bar on his sixth attempt. He has no courtroom experience, and indeed no experience at all except with a few personal injury cases. He arrives in town with his girlfriend, named Mona Lisa Vito and played by Marisa Tomei as a woman who has a certain legal potential trapped inside a street-smart personality.Pesci is so inexperienced he doesn't even know enough to stand when the judge enters the courtroom, and Whitfield, in desperation, hires another lawyer (Austin Pendleton) who thinks it a triumph if he can successfully complete a sentence.

The movie saves most of its best laughs for the long concluding courtroom sequence, in which one witness after another hammers together the prosecution case, and the innocent youths clearly seem headed for the electric chair. Gwynne's dour work in the courtroom scenes is especially good; in the annals of Judge Reaction Shots, which are a performance genre all their own, his work ranks high.But we never feel much for, or about, the two accused prisoners. Macchio, who has been effective in “The Karate Kid” (1984) and “Crossroads,” is used here essentially as a foil. He and Whitfield sit at the defense table and look worried, and that's about that.

Pesci and Tomei, on the other hand, create a quirky relationship that I liked. Neither one is played as a dummy. They're smart, in their own ways, but involved in a legal enterprise they are completely unprepared for. Tomei's surprise appearance as an expert witness is a high point, and left me feeling I would like to see this couple again. Maybe in a screenplay that was more focused.

Brilliant Film!

Author: Barky44 (barkybree@cox.net) from United States
17 September 2005

My Cousin Vinny is one of the most brilliant comedies ever produced. There is simply so much to love about this movie.First, this is not simply a slapstick comedy. Sure, there is some of that, including a few hilarious moments in the Alabama mud. But the dialogue in this film is terrifically funny. The writers were able to turn a courtroom script into an incredibly funny exchange of dialogue between lawyers, judges and witnesses. And the whole idea of an out-of-work hairdresser knowing about Positraction is simply brilliant.

This dialogue is brilliant because of excellent performances by both Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci. These two sell this whole load of nonsense so beautifully it should be mandatory viewing for first-year drama students. These two actors show how talented people can read practically anything and make it not only funny but wholly believable.

Even all the side characters, from the judge to the D.A. to the defendants to the jury and witnesses are brilliantly played. Some of the exchanges between a local Alabama judge and a NYC poser lawyer would be completely ridiculous in anyone else's hands, but these people make it so real and so funny it's truly a thing of beauty.This is one of those rare films that I can watch over and over again for hours and not tire of it.

10 out of 10 Barky

Underrated.

Author: tightspotkilo from Oregon, USA
19 December 2007

Underrated. I won't belabor relating and describing the plot, because that's been recited nicely by numerous others. I'll simply return to my one word point. Underrated. Even though Marisa Tomei broke through and won Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for her performance, an award she earned and much deserved, I still say underrated. This film really never got on the public's radar the way it should have, probably because there are no big-name actors featured as box office draw. Joe Pesci was as good as it gets that way. In 1991 he was the hottest name in the cast. But has Joes Pesci ever established himself as a leading man who could carry a movie by himself? I ask that in open-ended wonderment, and certainly not disparagingly. Just asking, is it fair, has it ever been fair, to expect Joe Pesci to carry a film?

Regardless of Joe Pesci's latent starpower, this cast of players as assembled possessed remarkable chemistry in the performances they gave, not only in their interactions with one another, but also in the creation of a final product that excels way beyond the sum of its parts, beyond any of their individual levels of genius, certainly beyond anything that could ever have been reasonably expected of them. Competent though they may have been, these were not thespian heavyweights or comedic savants. You ever wonder why this singular performance 15+ years ago and counting remains Marisa Tomei's magnum opus? That might be one big reason why. The Germans have a word for this. It's called gestalt.

My inclination is to give most of the credit for this winning final product to director Jonathan Lynn. It seems obviously to be his creation. Who else singularly deserves it? Along the way it would have been such a cheap trick and easy thing to surrender to the obvious, but Lynn didn't do it. This is a story built around stereotypes. New Yorkers. Ethnic Italian New Yorkers. Southerners. Small town southerners. Southern justice. Southern small town justice with New York Italians in the dock. It would have been so easy to traffic in those stereotypes, to over-the-top cash in on them, to submerge the movie in them and to exploit them for all they were worth. These people could have been made into cardboard cartoons of themselves. Surely the Englishman Lynn was thusly tempted, but it was a temptation he mainly resisted.

Oh, almost obligatorily, he dances us over to that edge and gives us a big whiff of all that, but instead of jumping in and wallowing in the stereotypes, he deftly pulls it back and carries it all off and away in a new and different direction, indeed in an uplifting direction. Just as there are no cheap tricks in this movie, there are no cheap shots either. People are not ridiculed for who they are or where they are from. It rises above that. Lynn raises it above that. Yes, the regional differences that exist are juxtaposed. And yes, we get the fact that cultural differences divide these characters. But the beauty of it is that no one is treated unfairly. In fact, the viewer comes away with the feeling that these are all good people.

Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei are given a broad canvas to create great humorous art, bouncing one, two, three liners or more off of each other, at the other's expense. It's the game they play with each other, the nature of their characters' relationship, and it's fun to watch. And this must be said: not only does Marisa give an exquisite performance, she is an utterly delightful feminine creature to watch here. As for the southerners, in not taking the bait to exploit the southerners as dumb hicks, Lynne actually captures part of the true but rarely portrayed essence of the south: polite gentility. Lane Smith embodies that essence. And Fred Gwynne? He practically steals the show, and would have were it not for Marisa Tomei.

What has been going through Joe Pesci's and Marisa Tomei's heads for the last 15 years? What is wrong with their agents? These two needed a sequel. If not a sequel, then more film(s) together. The dynamic between them was too good to just be abandoned. We should have been treated to much more of them together.As a trial lawyer let me say that the portrayal of courtroom events, while certainly not perfect, is more than adequate and passable. One thing that is accurately captured is the fish-out-of-water experience of a city lawyer when subjected to trying a case in a far-flung rural county. This depicton conveys the essence of what that's like.

This movie deserves more recognition. It is clever, funny, and fun. I recommend it. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and indulge yourself.

One of my favorites

Author: lfjeff63 from United States
30 August 2005

I can watch this film over and over again. Joe Pesci plays Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, a Brooklyn lawyer who is asked to defend his cousin and friend from a murder charge in Alabama. Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito, Vinny's girlfriend, deserved the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, rare for a comedy to even be nominated for anything by AMPAS. I really liked Fred Gwynne as the no-nonsense Judge Chamberlain Haller, a great foil for Joe Pesci's laid back, easy going Brooklyn wise guy. Even his name, Chamberlain Haller, evokes seriousness. A lot of fun, especially the courtroom antics of Pesci. Highly recommended.