This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Extended Family Gathering
Plot Overview
Former New York gangster Vincent (Ed
Harris) has been married to negress Sandy (Gabrielle Union) for
eighteen years now. His black step-son DJ (Miles J. Harvey) is
preparing to enter Dartmouth and is tormented from having his
girlfriend Brittany dump him. They three are on a family
retreat in their Maine country house to ring in the New Year.
Dropping in unexpectedly come DJ's “brother from another
mother” Rocco (Lewis Pullman,) his very pregnant
girlfriend Marina Brovo (Emanuela Postacchini,) and Vincent's
ex-wife Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge) who is Rocco's mother. The way
Ruth awakes from a drugged sleep indicates she's still attuned to danger.
Italian accented Marina's facility with unloosing Rocco's handcuff in the
hospital where they met indicates she's connected, too.
While DJ tends the barbecue grill
out back the men discuss what's up. Mob connected Johnny (Michael
Angelo Covino) was not one to keep with any one woman for long and
had called it quits with Marina before Rocco took up with her. A
chance encounter, however, had Johnny—who was under
pressures at home—threaten his pregnant ex, so Rocco defended
her by killing him. Now it is feared that Johnny's hoodlum father
Lefty (Bill Murray) will come after them. Ruth who at one time
dated Lefty concurs.
“College boy” DJ believes it a matter of
evolutionary biology that it's not necessarily the
strongest who prevail, but that women choose mates that are most
caring as they'll be wanting their care. This is evidenced by the
way Marina picked Rocco for the way he cared for an injured turtle,
and also that the Maine residents were most trusting, leaving their
doors unlocked and the stores unsurveiled. DJ would not so much as
shoot a chipmunk that was expected to devour his mother's
vegetable garden come spring. He might do well to consider the
Story of Beowulf. As adapted by Carolyn Sherwin
Bailey, a monster would slay unwary knights in the castle as they
slept. An unlikely hero arose: “Beowulf made ready for the
fight. He covered his body with armor lest the fiend should clutch
him. On his head was a white helmet decorated with figures of boars
worked in silver. No weapon could hurt it. His sword was a
wonderful treasure, with an edge of iron; it had never failed
anyone who had needed it in battle” (93). DJ's mother limited
their New Year celebration to sparklers, while the others would
have preferred noisier fireworks.
Ideology
As the (dark) humor of this gem concerns extended family relations by marriage, it behooves us first to define it. I'll quote Dr. Ide: “The Contemporary Christian standard was defined not by the bible but generated by Roman law as defined by the jurist Modestinus who argued that marriage was ‘consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani iuris communicatio: a life-long partnership, and a sharing of civil and religious rights’” (83–5). The civil part is covered by the state and its marriage license. But people had been getting wed long before the state ever got involved. The religious part is the province of the church who consider sex sanctified within the bounds of matrimony. Saint Augustine considered marriage the start of a domestic church. The civil part in itself would be a domestic partnership. According to Prof. Tamara Metz:
State control of marriage is not a universal arrangement. In many European and North American jurisdictions, religious authorities wielded final control over the institution until well into the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. … Among people who live in traditional societies at the fringes of the modern nation-state, marital status and practices proceed apace without the involvement of the state. (5)
“Riff Raff” presents Vince being divorced from Ruth before he married Sandy whose husband Laurence had died—as a result of his unfaithfulness—and she'd been divorced before. When Ruth being horny suggests a quickie in the woods with Vince, he rebuffs her (“It's time to move on, Ruth”) saying he's married (“Pull yourself together.”) A Christian, say, is given pause, considering the difference between a civil divorce open to any marrieds for any reason, and a religious one more restricted. (Matt. 5:31-32) “It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” For followers of Jesus, the civil divorce (“It hath been said”) is invalid unless the offending party committed fornication. Since Vince seems an upright guy, but not Ruth, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and say his divorce from Ruth was valid, and his marriage to Sandy therefore legitimate, so he is right not to betray her. If his earlier marriage were still in force, then he would have been cheating with Sandy all along, and Ruth's request valid.
As DJ is a budding scientist, we shall let an anthropologist weigh in. Consulting Marvin Harris on What is Marriage? we read:
One of the problems with the proposition that the nuclear family is the basic building block of all domestic groups is that it rests on the assumption that widely different forms of matings can be called “marriage.” Yet in order to cover the extraordinary diversity of mating behavior characteristic of the human species, the definition of marriage has to be made so broad as to be confusing. —Since the term marriage is too useful to drop altogether, a more narrow definition seems appropriate: Marriage denotes the behavior, sentiments, and rules concerned with coresident heterosexual mating and reproduction in domestic contexts.
To avoid offending people by using marriage exclusively for coresident heterosexual domestic mates, a simple expedient is available. Let such other relationships be designated as “noncoresident marriages”, “man-man marriages”, “woman-woman marriages,” or by any other appropriate specific nomenclature. It is clear that these matings have different ecological, demographic, economic, and ideological implications, so nothing is to be gained by arguing about whether they are “real” marriages. (317–18)
In “Riff Raff” the parent/step-parent duo Sandy & Vincent are a “coresident heterosexual domestic mating” broadly speaking. Their dynamic included the mother having produced a son from an earlier marriage and now them raising him together.
Rocco and Marina have
matrimonial aspirations, but it's pointed out that failure to use
a condom does not make it matrimony. They are merely shacking up.
They would need to solemnly pledge a troth before witnesses to be
married. The word matrimony itself comes from Latin
roots mater
meaning mother, and monium meaning state of; matrimony being the state in which
it is permitted (in Catholicism, say) for a woman to enter motherhood.
The conflict between Johnny and Lefty arose when the former his son came out to say that he couldn't have children because he was “shooting blanks,” and the latter—wanting very much to continue his line—confused that with a “homo thing.” In anger he kicked him out of the house. Then when Johnny encountered a very pregnant-by-another-man Marina, it pushed him over the edge, and Rocco “did what I did to protect my family.” A vengeful Lefty now pursues their family. This conflict can be traced further back.
According to cultural historian David Hackett Fischer, the Puritans had “a cultural idea of marriage that was unique to the Puritan colonies. … The Puritans of New England rejected all the Anglican ideas. They believed that marriage was not a religious but a civil contract” (77). In the New England states—& NY & DC—the civil contract was the whole kit and caboodle, so once laws against sodomy were abolished it was a simple matter of equal rights to open (civil) marriage to homosexuals. The rest of the states did not abide such a redefinition, but the courts—and in the case of Washington, propaganda—stepped in to force acceptance of same-sex marriage. What is now called marriage for homos used to be called domestic partnership or civil union, but that's all it is now anyway as a civil/legal definition does not affect the religious sphere.
The reasoning of the judiciary proceeded as follows: since a hetero union between old people who could hardly be expected to produce offspring could be called marriage, why not between partners of the same sex who for sure couldn't? From my engineering background, I'd think of it in terms of margins of error. If we allow heteros however old to get married, then we've covered all instances of conception at whatever age. But homos could never produce children, so we should use a different term for them and adjust their rights, privileges and responsibilities using such a vocabulary. As it stands [2025] in America, same-sex marriage ≡ infertile hetero marriage, which is how come Johnny's father Lefty got confused about it, leading to collateral damage.
Production Values
“” (2024) was directed by Dito Montiel. It was written by Dito Montiel as well. It stars Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris and Bill Murray. The actors were all in good form.
MPA rated it R for some strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and some drug use. It had good cinematography. The dialogue was classic clever repartee. The conflicts were sadly realistic. Runtime is 1¾ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
If dark comedy is your bag, this one's for you. We have to pay attention to get up to speed with the extended family who know their background well enough, but we can get there. There seem to be a lot of bodies to bury, or not. Not for the sparkler crowd.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action in the second half. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin. “Beowulf.” Adapted from the Story of Beowulf. Stories of Great Adventures. Copyright, 1919, by Milton Bradley Company. Springfield, Mass.: Milton Bradley Company. Print.
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Print, Web.
Harris, Marvin. CULTURE, PEOPLE, NATURE: An Introduction to General Anthropology fifth edition. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988. Print.
Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.
Metz, Tamara. Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2010. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org