House of Gucci - streaming free with Prime.
I very much like both Adam Driver and Lady Gaga, so I patiently waited for House of Gucci to become free with Prime on Amazon.
In my opinion, this is a silly movie. It actually has the feel of a made for TV movie rather than a feature film, but whatever. Even though everyone knows the sad ending, it was interesting to get to the end.
In the movie, Maurizio Gucci comes off as a real nebbish (clueless weakling) and a coddled daddy's boy. But hey, he is good looking and rich! Patrizia Gucci seems to be highly attracted to the idea of being Mrs. Gucci. She has a lot of street smarts and tries mightily to help her husband run the company. As time goes on, Patrizia is revealed to be very manipulating and a complete nut job.
Driver seems to have figured out that this movie wasn't going to be a great critical success about half way through since he often seemed to look like he was thinking "Remind me why I signed up for this." Lady Gaga is for the most part pretty good in this movie, although sometimes her character gets very "campy" and her Italian accent sometimes slips and she actually sounds like she is speaking with a Russian accent. Kind of funny, actually.
(There are no spoilers ahead because the events in this movie actually happened and everyone knows the ending.)
The story though is rather intriguing. Patrizia Gucci (nee Reggiani) meets Maurizio Gucci at a party, they fall in love, and despite the disapproval of his father and most of the Gucci family, they marry in 1973. The wedding scene is hilarious. One side of the church is packed. The opposite side of the church is completely empty except for 3 people, a couple and another random guest.
The opposition from Maurizio's family is a story as old as time. Patrizia grew up in the somewhat wealthy home of her mother and step-father, but did not meet the social and class standards of the Gucci clan.
Fast forward to years of living the high life of jet setters with more money than they know what to do with. Maurizio, however, turns out to be a not so great businessman and brings the company to near bankruptcy. He is eventually forced to sell his shares to an international corporation and the Gucci family ends up having no stake in Gucci. Hmmm.
Anyway, a divorce happens and Patrizia is not to happy about it. So she decides to hire a hitman and have her ex-husband assassinated.
Sidebar: The film completely leaves out one of their daughters and for some reason when Patrizia is pregnant with their oldest daughter we never see her pregnant. Instead, we see Patrizia looking chic and then viola...she is in the hospital with a baby. Al Pacino adds to the excess of campy acting with his portrayal of the very corrupt Uncle Aldo. There is a scene where Maurizo finds out about all of Uncle Aldo's income tax shenanigans in the United States. He explains to his cousin that in Italy taxes aren't such a big deal, but in America things are very different. Poor Uncle Aldo ends up going to prison in New York. Lol!
For all its silliness and faults, this movie is very entertaining!
= new reply since forum marked as read
sounds like a guilty pleasure....the best kind...
