You’ve just won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing a psychotic gangster and you’re worried that it’s going to lead to you getting typecast as a villain.  What do you do?

If you’re Joe Pesci, you follow-up playing Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas by agreeing to play Louie Kritski, Jr. in The Super.  Louie is the son of a slumlord (Vincent Gardenia) and he’s eager to follow his old man into the family business.  But when Louie is arrested for failing to keep his buildings up to code, he’s sentenced to actually live in one of them.  Louie has to stay in a rat-infested apartment.  He has to repair the rest of the building and will not be allowed to do any work on his apartment until everyone else’s apartment is up to code.  Louie thinks that his father will use his influence to get his son out of this mess.  It turns out that Big Lou just wants to set the building on fire and be done with it.  Louie isn’t down with that.  He may be a loud-mouthed slumlord but he has his standards.

Louie becomes a better person as a result of living in a slum.  All of the tenants, from Marlon (Ruben Blades) to Tito (Kenny Blank), come to respect him.  He even plays basketball with them.  Louie finds a new girlfriend (Madolyn Smith) in the court officer who is sent to check on his progress.  Louie is still Joe Pesci, though.  He’s still a loud mouth who is quick to lose his temper and there’s always a feeling that Louie is about to snap and blow the entire building away.  Joe Pesci was always a good actor and skilled at comedy but The Super doesn’t make good use of his talents in the way that My Cousin Vinny did.  My Cousin Vinny worked because it put Joe Pesci in a place where you wouldn’t expect to find Joe Pesci, the genteel South.  The Super is a New York movie and Pesci’s wiseguy intensity means that his sudden redemption doesn’t feel true.

The Super was a box office flop and briefly derailed Pesci’s attempts to show his range.  Luckily, My Cousin Vinny was right around the corner.