but this film is not

Rating: 1/10 (30 January 2006)

Admitively, I'm not a big fan of Benigni and I don't consider his kind of humour as even remotely funny, but what makes this exercise such a truly unbearable experience is that good old Roberto chooses the Holocaust of all things as a gloomy backdrop to make himself shine all the more.
Its always a big risk if the same person directs, writes and plays the lead and to my knowledge only Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Vincent Gallo and Woddy Allen can get away with it. But all of them have some kind of self-deprecating approach. A quality that is completely absent with Roberto Benigni. What makes it all the more annoying is, that most of the people fall for it, as was evident in the cinema when I watched the film.
So in order to make himself look good he writes a script that places himself in the middle of some very mean and nasty Nazis. Thankfully he doesn't need to bother with characters as everyone knows that the Nazis are are the epitome of evil anyway. But portraying himself as the tireless adversary of the oppressors isn't quite enough for Benigni. In order to hammer it home to the everyone that he is the good guy, he puts himself in charge of a cute little child, that he has to protect from the trauma of concentration camps. Sometimes this is quite easily done. As the two of them wander aimlessly around the grounds, they happen to come across a huge pile of bodies. We haven't realized this at first cause there was some very spooky fog floating around. Protectively Benini shields the boy's eyes from the unappetizing sight while the music reaches a dramatic crescendo. What a nice guy. This might seem like nitpicking to you but as they were apparently deported to a labour camp and not to an extermination camp, they wouldn't have come across such a sight. But any historic accuracy is secondary to Benigni as long as something gives him another opportunity to make out what a emphatic, altruistic and considerate character he is. Its so unsubtly done, it has to insult anyone with a bit of intelligence.
I know, coming up with a comedy set in the Third Reich is always a tricky business but Lubitsch and Chaplin have proved that it can be done. Benigni though fails on all fronts. Some scenes are shamelessly nicked from 'the Great Dictator', in another some raw eggs are placed in a hat and you think that this is so corny and predictable and he can't possible have the villain don the hat (ha ha) and yet he does, and even worse, the audience around me behaved as if this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. Well, if this is your kind of humour you're in for a real treat.