The gangly hero this time is FBI agent Mike Downey (Matthew Modine), a gung ho young fellow who comes off like a stoned Boy Scout in keeping surveillance on mob wife Angela De Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer, modeling luxurious brunette curls). Actually, she’s now a widow: Her hit-man husband, “Cucumber” Frank De Marco (Alec Baldwin), was just murdered by his boss, Tony “The Tiger” Russo (Dean Stockwell), for fooling around, with the same floozy.

Creepy Tony, a flashy Al Capone-style dresser who considers himself God’s gift to women, wants Angela in the worst way. It will take a while before Mike sees that she wants out in the worst way – out of Tony’s sight, out of the “family,” out of a life in which everything she eats or wears “fell off a truck.”

Shot in Demme’s patented dreamy/wide-­awake style (his cameraman, for the sev­enth time, is the gifted Tak Fujimoto), “Married to the Mob” brings an absurdist sit-com effervescence to its domestic scenes. Angela’s 7-year-old son, Joey (Anthony J. Nici), makes his old man proud by sucker­ing his little suburban pals in three-card Monte. When Angela tearfully demands a divorce, Frank laughs his head off, so crazy is the notion in line-toeing family circles.

Demonstrating their own bent syndicate moxie, a gang of mob wives converges on Angela in the supermarket, wielding lethal carts. Mrs. Tony “The Tiger” Russo (Mercedes Ruehl) is the film’s wild card: a psychotically jealous wife who will go to any length – and does – to make sure no one else is squeezing her husband.

Attempting to start a new life, Angela gives away all of her tainted belongings and moves with Joey from her house on Long Island into an awful dive on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After a series of hum­iliating job interviews, including one with the drooling Mr. Chicken Lickin’, she goes to work at a hair salon run by a goodheart­ed Jamaican named Rita (reggae singer “Sister” Carol East, one of the joys of “Something Wild”).

Few directors thrive on the ethnic riches of city life, or the tackiness of American culture, as personably as Demme. Shot for the most part in actual locations, “Married to the Mob” imparts a gritty vitality and generosity. But no amount of atmosphere or far-reaching ambiance from soundtrack maestro David Byrne – who programs ev­erything from Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano” to Wazmo’s “Kramtorn Avenges the Puttbundles” – can overshadow the lack of romantic chemistry between Modine and Pfeiffer.

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