‘My Cousin Vinny’ Is Innocent of Any Charge

The comedy does virtually nothing wrong.

The casting director did phenomenal work in My Cousin Vinny. Every actor is exactly right for his or her role.

The 1992 movie is a fish-out-of-water comedy, one in which the fish is nowhere near liquid of any kind. Joe Pesci plays Vinny Gambini, a born-and-bred New Yorker who goes to a small Alabama town to defend his cousin and his cousin’s friend in court. But he has no trial experience. He’s out of his element both inside and outside the courtroom. The obstacles and frustrations mount from all directions.

The once and future Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio, plays Bill Gambini, the college-age cousin accused of murder. He’s a good kid who makes a dumb mistake. Mitchell Whitfield plays his friend Stan, who’s charged with accessory to murder and isn’t so trusting of Bill’s uncouth cousin.

Fred Gwynne leads the courtroom as Judge Chamberlain Haller. He looks and sounds every bit the small-town judge—fully Southern and thoroughly dignified, with no patience for any shenanigans in his courtroom nor any comprehension of the word “yutes.”

Lane Smith, who would soon become the greatest on-screen Perry White, plays prosecuting attorney Jim Trotter III. He’s a good ol’ boy, but he bears no malice toward anyone. He’s an experienced professional who knows the territory and is just doing his job, and that alone makes him a formidable obstacle to Vinny.

And, of course, Marisa Tomei elevates the movie with her Oscar-winning performance. She plays Vinny’s long-suffering fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito, the only character who has no need to be in the courtroom, but the movie wouldn’t be half as memorable without her. She’s there to help Vinny—for her own benefit as well as his. She wants to get on with her life. Her biological clock, you may have heard, is ticking.

The script is the movie’s greatest strength of all. Screenwriter Dale Launer put tremendous care into every individual scene as well as the overall structure. Even the abundant profanity exists for a purpose—it heightens the contrast between Vinny and his surroundings.

The contrast, and the resulting friction, creates much of the humor. There’s no pointing and laughing at the townsfolk, no smug superiority. We’re laughing at Vinny as much as anyone else. No one is better or worse. They’re just different.

Obstacles are set up, and they all pay off, intersecting as they do. Loud noises keep waking Vinny up early in the morning, and the judge keeps holding him in contempt of court. The latter eventually winds up being the solution to the former. The final time, Vinny asks Lisa not to bail him out, and he winds up getting a restful night’s sleep in jail because the noise there approximates the noise of New York far better than early-morning trains, squealing pigs, or hooting owls.

Stan’s distrust of Vinny prompts him to hire a public defender (played by Austin Pendleton), who initially exudes a kindly, reassuring presence … until he gets up in court and reveals a stutter. A severe stutter. It’s so bad that he can barely get through his opening remarks, and he crashes and burns while questioning his first witness. This tees up Vinny to demonstrate his one true talent: arguing with people and picking apart all the flaws in their logic.

Vinny, having only recently learned about the existence of grits, is able to leverage this new knowledge to expose a gaping hole in a witness’s testimony, culminating in this wonderful moment:

Vinny Gambini: Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than on any place on the face of the earth?

Mr. Tipton: I don't know.

Vinny Gambini: Well, perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove. Were these magic grits? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?

It embraces the absurd without getting too carried away. And even as Vinny finds his groove, he shows he’s still very much Vinny. “I got no more use for this guy,” he says as he dismisses the witness.

The dialogue is exceptional throughout. A+. Listen and observe:

The punchline is perfection. It takes both characters’ concerns and ties them together, retroactively enhancing the previous two minutes we just watched. “Would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who shot you was wearing?”

The tension between Vinny and Lisa glues the whole movie together. She keeps looking for ways to help him, and the opportunity to make her most important contribution occurs at the moment of maximum tension between the two. Putting her on the stand as an automotive expert, at that specific point, was inspired—but only because everything was properly set up.

My Cousin Vinny is a superb standalone comedy. It’s not trying to launch a franchise or change the world or impart some moral wisdom upon you. But it will make you laugh—on the first, third, and even sixth viewing. The movie understands its job, and it excels at it.