Don't watch this after Pinocchio

Rating: 2/10 (2 January 2012)

I've seen Schindler's List and The Pianist, and consider both excellent. I've also watched video's from Spielberg's Shoah foundation, and read many books and accounts. Pál Turán's stories, for example. I've watched Hogan's Heroes, and the disastrous Pinocchio.
Roberto Benigni has a particular "I can get away with anything" style that spoiled the movie for me. For example, he slowly rides a green-painted live horse into a fancy restaurant, has a long conversation with a bureaucrat that hates him, steals away a girl, and a large egg that happened to be right over the bureaucrat's head splatters on him as Benigni slowly rides away. No-one tries to stop him. Earlier, Benigni is getting away from the same bureaucrat on a bicycle, and collided with the girl. But as they start to talk, the bicycle is abandoned. It's just a movie prop, after all.
This pervasive unreality saturates the film. Benigni isn't acting appropriately anywhere, so it's unsurprising when the Nazi's act with deference to him throughout the last half of the film. All the Italians are good, only Germans are bad (and just mildly so). The Germans are also dumb as bricks.
I probably would have liked this more if I hadn't seen Pinocchio first. I did like the boy and many of the supporting players. This could have been a much better film with more reality and thought. A poor person would never abandon a bicycle. There's a good Italian 1948 movie by Vittorio De Sica on the topic.