My Cousin Vinny

Comedy, Crime

Fred Gwynne	Judge Chamberlain Haller
Ralph Macchio	Billy Gambini
Joe Pesci	Vincent Gambini
Marisa Tomei	Mona Lisa Vito
Maury Chaykin	Sam Tipton
Aubrey J. Osteen	Deputy
Mitchell Whitfield	Stan Rothenstein
Bruce McGill	Sheriff Dean Farley
Paulene Myers	Constance Riley
Austin Pendleton	John Gibbons
Lane Smith	D.A. Jim Trotter, III

Director	Jonathan Lynn
Producer	Dale Launer; Paul Schiff
Writer	Dale Launer

When two Italian-American boys from New York are falsely accused of murder in a small Alabama town, they call for a lawyer--but the only lawyer they know is their cousin Vinny (Joe Pesci), who made six attempts before he passed his bar exam. My Cousin Vinny is a classic fish-out-of-water comedy; the flimsy plot about clearing the two boys and solving the murder is just a hook to support a lot of culture-clash humor. Thanks to the strong cast of character actors like Fred Gwynne, Austin Pendleton, and Lane Smith, it's pretty funny--even old-hat jokes about Brooklyn versus Southern accents come to life. Pesci has played a few too many schticky characters, but this time it works. There's just enough humanity in his caricature to make Vinny likable and entertaining. When the movie was released, there was controversy about whether Marisa Tomei, playing Vinny's big-haired and black-leather-wearing fiancée, deserved to win the best supporting actress Oscar (she beat out Judy Davis, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, and Vanessa Redgrave); but seeing her performance on its own, it's a comic marvel and worthy of honor. --Bret Fetzer