The Family

The checkered legacy of big-screen mobster comedies won’t be given a boost by The Family, which tries to mesh together a handful of disparate ideas without succeeding at any of them.

It’s an attempt at broad farce by veteran French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), mixing comedic culture-clash elements with ruthless mob violence without much regard for tone or narrative logic.

There also is a stab at family dysfunction in the tale of Gio (Robert De Niro), an aging gangster whose family is relocated to rural France as part of a witness protection program after he snitched on some of his colleagues.

However, Gio and his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) — living under aliases, with Gio claiming to be a writer by the name of Fred — have trouble assimilating with the locals, while their two teenage struggle to fit in at school. It’s not long before the family’s old habits threaten to blow their cover, much to the chagrin of a federal agent (Tommy Lee Jones) assigned to watch over them.

With its formulaic gags about family dysfunction and language barriers, his is familiar comic territory, of course, even if it’s new for Besson. There are some scattered amusing sight gags and one-liners, especially from De Niro, who at least seems to have fun playing a variation of the type of characters on which he built his career decades ago.

The film becomes an uneven, mischievous satire of French customs and traditions that winds up indulging in many of the same cartoonish stereotypes it intends to lampoon.

One problem is that the script — adapted by Besson and Michael Caleo (The Last Time) from a novel by Tonino Benacquista — remains completely detached from reality. Plus, it runs out of gas before transitioning awkwardly into a revenge drama in the final act, brought about by a series of eye-rolling twists.

Besides De Niro, much of the cast is squandered. Pfeiffer isn’t given much screen time in the spotlight, and Jones is saddled with an underwritten role that doesn’t play to his strengths.

For a story built on deception and disguise, The Family doesn’t yield any surprises, even for the most devoted Besson supporters.

Rated R, 110 minutes.