Facing financial and emotional hardship as his life as he knows it falls apart, a man returns home with a plan in mind; utilizing his family’s Mafia connections to get rich or die trying.
There’s something so endearing about a bad movie that knows it’s bad and embraces it. It doesn’t matter if it started with the script or because that way somewhere along the way, but either way, The Return of Joe Rich is definitely a bad movie in all the right ways. Telling a story that’s so deeply drenched in Goodfellas influences that it’s almost a copyright issue, and yet somehow being the cutest knockoff I’ve ever seen, it’s hard to say anything positive about it without chewing my thumb and giggling a little. Though that might be because of my massive Sam Witwer crush. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta.
Written and directed by the virtually never heard from again Sam Auster, I can’t tell if he was in on the joke or not, but he certainly gave the monkeys their playground. Basing the story around the real life mobsters of Chicago, and interjecting interviews and “home video” style footage of them between film scenes in a pace obliterating stylization choice, The Return of Joe Rich is terrible from every angle to the point that it doesn’t matter what genre it thinks it is, it becomes a comedy. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because sometimes a horrible movie can still be a lot of fun to watch.
Regardless, Sam Witwer is very obviously having a blast. You can see it on his face, every frame, every scene, he’s just enjoying the hell out of himself. Whether he’s pretending to fire a gun shirtless in the bathroom mirror or committing heinous acts of disgusting violence in a very sexy way, he elevates the project beyond “badness” into a really good time for the viewer. I wish I could say the same about Talia Shire and Armand Assante. I guess they owed somebody a favor, or maybe they just needed a quick paycheck, but either way, these two are just phoning in their performances, which only helps to make Sam shine even brighter. If you watch it for no reason other than to see him take on a lead role (which was my reason for watching) then you’ll be thoroughly pleased. Blending his fantastic villainy skills with the endearing sweetness he brought to his role in Being Human, Sam plays Joe perfectly on the line between bad guy and good guy.
And despite the blatant low budget production value, we do get some pretty good practical effects during the scenes of violence. Baseball bats and garbage disposals combined with shootouts and dead bodies all look pretty good, considering the film they’re in, and that was probably the best part of the production aside from Sam’s performance. Editing is bad, cinematography is worse, and the score might as well not be there, but at least the poster is the best thing to come out of the designer’s YouTube certification in Photoshop, right down to that pose Sam is striking. Bravo!
The Return of Joe Rich is an absolutely awful movie if you’re looking for a Mafia film in the vein of Goodfellas. But if you’re looking for an unintentionally funny and riotously good time, then look no further than this one. You’ll be laughing, whether that was Auster’s intention or not.