Frankie is an Italian American pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter with her band. Frankie's life suddently becomes a lot more interesting than usual when she discovers a dead body in her rental car and turns it over to the police. It turns out to be the corpse of a mob boss, and at the urging of her mafia-obsessed sister Heather, Frankie somehow finds herself attending the dead man's funeral.
There, Frankie meets Nicolette, a charming, confident, beautiful woman who, unbeknownst to Frankie, is also the daughter of the new mob boss.
The two women begin to spend time together, which quickly starts to complicate things. Some of this is complication is because of the emerging romantic interest between them. Nicolette clearly wants more than friendship, while Frankie - who has a boyfriend, though admittedly not one who enriches her life her very much - struggles to process her feelings.
The rest of the complication, however, comes from the fact that neither the cops nor the mob believe that Frankie has innocently stumbled into Nicolette's life. Troubles of the heart could soon be the least of her concerns - her freedom or her life might be in danger ...
This is a pleasant little romantic comedy about two women meeting, falling in love, and - as often happens in romantic comedies - dealing with quirky, unexpected complications along the way. It's definitely comedy with a lower-case 'c', though: there are few outright laughs here. Instead it's mostly humour of the 'wry smile' family drama variety ... with added mobsters.
Speaking of mobsters, one theme from which the film manages to find several of those wry smiles is interplay of the pride Italian-Americans take in their culture and heritage, and the less-than-enthusiastic feeling they have for the popular culture depiction of the mafia.
The film profits from a solid cast. There's no "big stars" here but the cast are all capable, and several are
recognisable in an "I know I've seen them somewhere before" kind of way.
Frankie herself is played by 2004 American Idol runner-up Diana DeGarmo. Transitions from such shows to scripted film and TV can sometimes be rocky, but there are no issues here. I'd definitely include DeGarmo's performance in the "capable cast doing solid work" category. Likely it helped that she had done a variety of musical theatre and film and TV work before this movie.
Not surprisingly, given DeGarmo is playing an aspiring musician in the film, she also features on three tracks in the movie's soundtrack.
So do I have any complaints? Only one, really, though I do think it's a somewhat important weakness. This is that the central romance seems very quick. Frankie and Nicolette don't interact all that much before they are kissing - and remember that Frankie, at least, is at least supposed to be "taken". Even if she is clearly not satisfied in that relationship, she hasn't ended it. Both the main players are likeable enough that it's fairly easy to let this slide, and it's certainly not the only film that I've seen where this is an issue - people understandably want to get to the romantic heart of the story, after all - but it was still a bit of a niggle for me as I was watching the film.
Overall, though, this is decent lightweight fare. Solid lazy afternoon or evening, "just want something undemanding and fun" kind of stuff.
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