Cookie

Emily Lloyd, who amazed moviegoers with her smart and sassy performance in Wish You Were Here, trades in her British accent for American punk slang, as the title character of Susan Seidelman's (Desperately Seeking Susan, She-Devil) stylish comedy on the Mafia. When Cookie goes to court for jumping a subway turnstile, it alarms her father Dino (Peter Falk). Dino has been in the big house now for 13 years, and he's coming up for parole. Cookie, who doesn't know her father from an eggplant, is hauled up to see him, and then told she starts work the following Monday for one of Dino's friends. Cookie's mother (Dianne Wiest), who is Dino's mistress, is a milksop who turns on the tears when she really wants something, but otherwise lets Cookie run over her. She really wants Cookie and Dino to get along. Ergo, Cookie becomes Dino's driver and eventual accomplice in his madcap drive to regain his lost place in Little Italy's hierarchical family. The story is mostly fluff, but it's very talented fluff. Nora Ephron (Heartburn) and Alice Arlen wrote the witty screenplay; Lloyd, Falk, and Wiest unashamedly raise corniness to the level of art; and Seidelman, the anti-establishment imp director, lays on the cinematic style as if it's The Godfather. Cookie won't fill you up, but it's a great dessert. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)