PISCATAWAY, NJ - Antonella Barba made her small screen debut this week in a straignt-to-the-Internet sex video called The Soprano, which is not about a female singer with a high-pitched voice. Indeed, this Soprano is not about a singer at all, even though Ms. Barba does burst into song at the most comical times during the festivities.
The Soprano on view here is A.J. Soprano, Tony's no-account son, who works as a delivery boy for the Domino's Pizza franchise owned by his father in Piscataway, New Jersey. Ms. Barba plays Bobbie Antonelli, a cocktail waitress and aspiring singer, who is being kept, unbeknownst to A.J., by Paulie Walnuts, one of Tony Soprano's lieutenants. The one with the creepy, white, gull-wing hair that complements his shoes and belt.
The action in this predictable "romance" begins late on a summer morning as Bobbie is lounging by the pool in her cheesy apartment complex enjoying a pre-lunch screwdriver. Too lazy to cook, she rings Domino's Pizza and orders a large meat-lover's special. Quicker than you can say, "D'ya think she'll do the delivery guy?" there stands a sweaty A.J. at Bobbie's door.
"Did anybody here order a meat lover's?" he asks with feigned indifference.
"I am a meat lover," replies Bobbie with exaggerated coyness. "You can come inside while you change, I mean, make change. You'll melt out there."
From this engaging setup The Soprano goes downhill fast. A.J. and Bobbie progress in a cliched arc from swapping wooden one liners—"I've always preferred finger food"—to swapping spit. Soon Bobbie is ordering pizza three afternoons a week, but one afternoon Paulie Walnuts comes by to surprise her with a cannoli while Bobbie's trying to suck the filling out of A.J.'s cannoli.
At this point what had been a pant-by-numbers exercise turns dark and stupid. Will Paulie's lingering resentment of Tony inspire him to whack Tony's son? Will A.J.'s desire to get made inspire him to whack Paulie? Will Bobbie break into a horrible rendition of Celine Dion’s "Because You Loved Me"? Does anybody care?
You don't have to be Roger Ebert to see that this undercooked production is enough to make those frozen pizzas with the self-rising crusts look like gourmet fare—despite grinding performances by its co-stars and a surprise topping at the end. Yet try as Bobbie and A.J. might to flesh out their roles with leaden banter and single entendre humor, this tedious and predictable romance never gets off the shag carpet.
