I had never seen My Cousin Vinny prior to the suggestion that I participate in a 20th Anniversary retrospective of the film. My primary memory of the movie is that it was part of three separate waves moving through American movie-going at the time. (1) In the wake of 1990's Goodfellas, America had very much embraced actor Joe Pesci. It would be another 2-3 years and I would suffer through With Honors (1994) before he would sort of disappear once again. (2) There was also a small trend in the manner of Doc Hollywood to show city folk as fish-out-of-water in the country and (3) since the 1980's, people from highly urban areas with New York accents were often presented as having special powers that helped them navigate in the city and bamboozled people in the country or suburbs (see any movie from the 1980's). Country folk (or Australians) also had super powers. Only suburbanites were not imbued with special skills or powers from their environment.
The movie is now most famous for the, as memory serves, surprise nomination and win of Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito, the titular Vinny's long-suffering and unlikely fiance. It is also famous for being the last place anyone of my generation remembers seeing Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio show up in a movie.
